Sushi

In general, if it doesn’t swim fast enough, a Japanese person will chop it up, slap it on rice, and call it sushi. The most common things you see here are the same as at home: tuna, yellow tail, cooked shrimp (oddly enough, not as much salmon). But you do get some odder ones. Unagi, the fresh water eel almost always served in a special sweet sauce. The little translucent orange eggs that pop on your tongue. Raw scallops that look disgustingly squishy but aren't. Raw shrimp that taste unbelievably sweet and unbelievably slimy. Sea urchin which doesn’t taste bad but is beyond slimy (the association the mind makes when eating it is too gross to even bring up here). Some variant of tuna that is so tender it melts in your mouth. Egg cakes that look like yellow duplo. The list goes one and on.

The ideal ratio of fish to rice also differs, depending on the region you’re in. Some places favor an almost one to one ratio, others weight it heavily towards the fish. I had a new one last night though. Instead of the usual log shape, the rice was in the form of a sphere with a flat bottom. And there was barely enough fish to cover the top. But interestingly enough, the rice wasn’t just regular sushi rice – it had things in it. The rice balls with no fish at all had bits of seaweed and pickles. The ones with pickled mackerel on top had a little purple pickle in the middle. The salmon ones had roe mixed in the rice. All very carefully chosen so that it was appealing to both the taste buds and the eye. No idea what it was called or how to order it again, but it was good.