Fancy Dinner

As I mentioned in my last post, the English teachers at my junior high took me out to dinner on Friday. Originally they wanted to go to a yakiniku (Korean bbq) restaurant, but I had been to three barbecues the previous weekend and had another one planned for the following day. So we ended up at a Japanese-style restaurant. Although I've been here a year there were still exciting, new dishes I hadn't tried yet.

There was a soup that involved a contraption that you had to squeeze jellied seaweed out of. That was quite entertaining, and pretty tasty.

I finally tried whale. I'm surprised I hadn't encountered it yet. The waitress as well as my dinner companions got a little worried about my reaction to the whale (since foreigners tend to be ethically opposed to whale meat). I rather liked it, although it took a long time to chew a piece and I would get tired of the flavor by the time I was done.

We also had sea urchin. I tried this once before, but it was not in its shell that time. Although mine was sufficiently dead, a few of the sea urchins on our table were still moving a few of their spines. One of them was quite active. Also pretty entertaining (but not very tasty in my opinion.)