Today was the last day of the crazy Hiroshima class professor's class, and to celebrate we all went out to a restaurant where they served us more or less unlimited quantities of the food of the gods, if the gods eat heaps and heaps of raw fish and stuff on skewers. Our splendid meal ended up lasting over two hours and was seriously an unbelievable amount of awfully expensive food I'd never had before, starting with the relatively inexpensive oysters, progressing to $50 sushi platters, then ending with a big plate covered in raw blowfish slices, which must have cost about as much as three Chinese families and a box of gold-plated Marlboros. The food was all ridiculously good, and given the fact that I will clearly never be able to eat like that again, I completely let myself go into the sea of delicious, um, seafood.
Now, it being Japan, of course the raw fish was only to be expected. What was outside of my expectations was the fish on a skewer with its organs removed and meat exposed (but head and tail still attached) that sat still for a few minutes, then started twitching to prove to the world that it was, in fact, so deliciously fresh as to be still struggling hopelessly for life. Surprisingly, these automatic muscle spasms continued for over ten minutes, so we all endured fully a sixth of an hour, which when you think about it is an awfully large portion of an hour, of looking at this big twitching tail while we ate said fish's friends and neighbors. Even better was that, to celebrate its valiant struggle, my professor ordered it thrown in miso soup and made both delicious and fully dead.
Also, it being Professor Higuma, of course the alcohol flowed like water would if it was being ordered and consumed hand over fist by an increasingly incomprehensible 60-something Japanese man. Not being on medicines that alert you that they don't mix well with alcohol only after you realize that you are totally plowed from about three drinks, I was pretty much fine, but Owen was trying his best to match Higuma with the goal that an equally drunk man could communicate with him in Drunk Talk and thus unlock the secrets of the Higuma universe and possibly control his incessant flirting with girls a third his age. The former was moderately achieved, but unfortunately the latter is a feat well beyond the powers of single drunk man, however skillful. I am a terrible person, so I continued to foist the liquor off on Owen for rather a long while, then rounded out the evening by trying to convince him to drink a bowl of soy sauce. Sadly this attempt pretty much failed, but Ayed has the process on video, which is absolutely excellent because it was sheer bliss to watch the 10% or so of Owen's brain that was functioning normally boldly fighting to convince the other 90% that the fact that I had spent the evening handing him cups of alcohol did not necessarily mean that every cup I handed to him was tasty liquor, especially if the liquid inside was suspiciously black and peppery.
- Gyaa! I'm give up
Naka-ku, Hiroshima
730-0803
JAPAN