What's Eating You?

For the second night in a row I have passed out while putting my daughters to sleep, woken up in the middle of night, fully clothed and thirsty, the heaters on high and all the doors closed.  It feels rank.  Tonight I decided, after I drank 3 litres of water, that I better pull my finger out and write something.  I thought yesterday that it must have been the six hour journey on three trains while carrying my snowboard on my back, pulling a suitcase with two other bags hanging off it, and dragging a child through four train stations, that wrecked me.  However, tonight, I am suspecting now, that I must have wiped myself out both nights with the sheer volume of food I consumed at dinner.  For a nation of waifs (apart from the sumo wrestlers), they sure can put it away.  For each evening meal, there has been enough food to constitute five separate dinners.  It's crazy.  The first night I was thinking "I don't want to appear rude and wastefully foreign - I better chow down".  But tonight I didn't give a shit, as there was no way I could woof down a dish that consisted of pieces of bacon topped with chunky miso, some sort of lump tasting like a cross between tofu and potato, a small plate of really salty mini whole fish, and a bowl of what honestly looked like pond algae topped with an elongated rosebud and small polystyrene cubes. For every unbelievably tasty item Japan has to offer, there is another completely wild option lurking in the wings (where on earth does that stoopid phrase come from anyway?).

This is fish sperm if anyone feels that way inclined

raw horse meat

Call me picky, but I just couldn't go there.  The thing is, I like to consider myself really adventurous in my food tastes - but after one too many food errors in this wonderful country (I really did think the raw horse sashimi was tuna - I'm so sorry Black Beauty), I've got to draw the line. 

I still ate more than my fair share though.  We thought however, that we'd actually made it out of there tonight without dessert.  Last night when we couldn't manage another bite, they packed the dessert onto trays for us to take back to our room - I say trays because there were six plates of various treats.  However, about half an hour after we went to bed tonight, the waitress just rocked up into the room, turned on the light (spun out because my partner was on top of the bed passed out in his undies) and unloaded more plates of dessert on the table.  I checked them out just now - six different types of jellies in multi-sized love heart shapes and one raspberry sitting on a tiny bit of pink cream.

It's hard to say no sometimes.  In Japanese there's not even a word for no.  No kidding - you just sort of skate around the "no" by saying things like "it's very difficult" or "that's not entirely correct".  Being ambiguous is part of the Japanese identity.  It does get confusing though when you've got to get bureaucratic shit done, and six people are conferring about your one simple question, as they don't want to tell you "You're dreaming love - get on your bike".  You end up loving and hating it simultaneously.

fermented soy beans- natto

But back to the food - so all our declarations of "we couldn't",  "so full", and " not for me", fell on deaf ears.  The waitresses, who are all old ladies wearing kimono, brought dish after dish - until we just had to get up and leave. But, as I said before, they found out our room number and kept delivering.  It wouldn't have been hard - we are the only foreigners in a tiny hotel in the middle of a snowy wonderland.  I think they get some Korean visitors from time to time, as a popular Korean drama is filmed at the lake nearby.  But westerners are few and far between.  The twins are a popular act.  A crowd actually gathered around Valli when I took her ski clothes off today.  As I removed her hat and her white-blonde hair cascaded out, an "Oooooooooohhhhhhh" erupted from the onlookers.  This hotel seems popular with old people.  I don't think I've seen a guest under eighty.  There is no English spoken either which is always makes things interesting (They probably thought we said "give us one of everything you've got" when we booked for dinner).  Everything is very authentically old style Japanese.  I can't handle the breakfast though.  Come morning time, I am looking for coffee and perhaps a couple of bites of some kind of bread-like item.  Fermented soy-beans (natto), fish roe and miso soup just aren't on my list.  You know what they say though - one man's meal is another man's poison. I better just suck it up and enjoy fish as my morning dish.