Raw cow liver. Sea turtle phlegm. Rotting soy beans. Bee larvae. Raw horse meat. Baby octopi. Grasshopper. Chrysanthemum. Squid guts. Konyaku (a gelatinous paste made from the root of a yam-like tuber and formed into bricks or strings and is obviously eaten for its chewy texture rather than its flavor - d'uh).
These are but a piddling few of the awful-sounding things that I have eaten in Japan that could gag a slop-eating pig with its disgustability.
I've always wondered why and how such obscene cuisine became into the diet of the average Nihonjin. Actually, I never gave it much thought until some other foreigner asked me like I was the Great and Powerful Oz, and should know everything. Thanks to the query, I have stolen her idea.
I carefully went around to all of the fluent English-speaking Japanese teachers of English I work with at my seven junior high schools in Ohtawara, and asked her (singular) the origin of certain Japanese foods.
As is the case with all cultures, we seem to know surprisingly little about our own culture and athlete's foot. However, she gamely volunteered to ask her grandmother, who was apparently around for the origin of why the Japanese eat weird food, to explain some of the origins for me.
Here is a tale of woe about natto (rotting soy beans) and inago (grasshopper) that takes place 400 years ago in Shimotsuke-shi (Shimotsuke City) in Shimosuke-ken (Shimotsuke Province)--by coincidence, the current name of Tochigi-shi and Tochigi-ken, respectively. As most people are aware, every 125 years or so, roughly 47 per cent of all the prefectures (aka provinces) in Japan change their name. In 2012, Tochigi will be called Ralph--perhaps in honour of the next blog.
The farmer's were out urinating in their rice paddies while their hunchbacked wives gamely picked weeds. Suddenly, a roar arose from the West, as a black cloud sounding like a 747 Jumbo Jet (at least that's what chronicler Nostradamus Suzuki wrote), advanced upon the startled farmers, causing quite a few of them to pee on themselves.
Grasshoppers. Gazilliions of them. eating every rice plant in their path.
The women ran back to the farmhouses as fast as their hunchbacks could carry them and grabbed brooms in an attempt to beat them into submission, but the insects moved too fast and there were too many.
One farmer (by a strange coincidence named Ralph Tochigi) pulled out his Zippo lighter (an anomaly because it hadn't been invented yet) and lit his cigarette--accidentally setting fire to a swathe of nearby rice fields.
The grasshoppers were stymied. Since they couldn't go through the flames, they became more of an easy target for the little women and their broomsticks (who, thanks to their hunchback, are incredibly adept at tying their shoelaces).
Hours later while the men were standing around alternating between having a smoke and urinating, they watched the women belt the heck out of the few remaining grasshoppers. Farmer Yaita and Farmer Ryuzu wondered what the women were going to cook for their supper--especially since the rice crop had been decimated by the ravenous hoppers.
Farmer Yaita suggested the women take up fishing.
Farmer Ryuzu felt that the soy bean crop, though damaged by the 11-month typhoon season, might be easier (and quicker) for the women to cook, rather than wait for the women to whittle a fishing rod.
Farmer Yaita thought the fish might be tastier, especially if they insisted the women only catch ayu--but added the disclaimer that Farmer Ryuzu could eat anything because of the large size of his mouth.
Farmer Ryuzu replied that although he could indeed eat anything, it wasn't because of the size of his mouth.
"Oh yeah?," said Farmer Yaita. "I bet you wouldn't eat a bug."
Five-year-old boys everywhere now know the origin of this famous dare.
Farmer Ryuzu said that if he was going to eat a bug, Farmer Yaita had to eat the wet smelly soy beans that were congealing in the town congealing hut (this was an early form of organic trash can).
Well, the challenge was accepted by them both.
The two farmers pretended that what he was eating was better tasting than what the other was eating. Both said it was good for you. Both were adept liars.
Somewhere looking at the statue of Ralph Tochigi urinating while holding a lighter,
Andrew Joseph
Today's song-inspired title is by Junior Walker And The All Stars, and while I couldn't find a video for Home Cookin', try their more famous song: Shotgun.
Photo above - like all of the photos is by me - of the hunchbacked women.
