Good Eats - Sushi

It's not like I expected the things I know to be true in America to actually ring true here, but I was kind of hoping that I'd see a California roll on the conveyor belt come my way. I didn't. I'm a confessed sushi virgin. Apparently there are still a few of us out there and I'm not ashamed to admit it. On Friday night, when I ventured out on the rainy streets of Yokosuka looking for a sushi-go-round (sushi served on a conveyor belt), I experienced real sushi, for the first time. Streets that while being very densely populated with people, were surprisingly quiet. Well, mostly quite. I was talking, loudly of course.

The types of sushi all my friends and family eat are basically a western invention to suit the American palette. Of course we'd have to do it differently, the majority of us couldn't stomach the the things I saw. However hopeful I was, there were no California rolls of avocado, crab and cucumber...no Dynamite rolls of yellowtail and spicy mayonnaise...no Spider rolls of fried crab...definitely no Philadelphia rolls of cream cheese, salmon and cucumber...and absolutely no rolls coated in fried tempura batter. This is a good article on "Why They Think We're Crazy".

What I did encounter scared me to the point of giggles. Sitting inside a nondescript sushi-go-round, part restaurant, part fish stand, the smell of fish was sobering. I wasn't drunk, though hopeful, but any bravado I had to that point was kicked to the curb like last week's trash. There on the conveyor belt was Nigiri-zushi, little fingers of rice topped with wasabi and a filet of raw fish. I sat stunned for several moments. My girlfriend actually had to nudge me to jumpstart my breathing again. There were a few non-raw specimens, a cooked piece of shrimp on rice, an egg omelet and some inari (fried tofu pouches of rice) all of which I happily ate, while I turned down plate after plate of fish guts, octopus with the suckers still sucking, and something fairly transparent that reminded me of sperm with little eye balls staring back.

After a biiru, lots of pep talks from my girlfriend, even a fellow gaijin stranger prodding me along, the time had come. I settled on tuna. It took me a minute or two, my chopsticks quivering, probably from the laughing convulsions of my nervousness. It is hard to think that I blended with the rest of the patrons.

I didn't eat the whole of the two pieces. I should have because I didn't find it offensive in the least. It was butter tender, with no traces of fishiness. If I had been blindfolded and told otherwise, I would have believed it to be the finest cut of beef available. But I knew. I knew I was eating raw fish and that was stronger than the sweet, delicate taste of the tuna.

For a first timer, I suppose I followed most of the rules of etiquette, and there are quite a few. Thankfully, the Japanese are very forgiving of gaijin misteps, because as it turns out after some research, I made a faux-pas or two. The local sitting to my right kept a watchful eye on me, offering me a plate for I thought the leftover shrimp tails. She quickly waved her hand, made a little noise that I couldn't identify and pointed to the pot of gari (ginger) that you use to cleanse your palette between bites. Oh! Okay, oops! I dipped the whole sushi into the mixture of shoyu and wasabi, which is a no-no, as I learned, it sort of makes a rice soup when the bits of rice fall off. Fish only dipping. Oh! Okay, got it! And as for as mixing the shoyu and wasabi...in my defense that is what my girlfriend told me to do...that is considered an afront to the itamae (sushi chef). Last time I listen to her. He portions the exact amount of wasabi to the proportion of fish and rice. Why then do they provide little packets of wasabi? I guess you're supposed to sneak it on the fish when he isn't looking. What happens when he catches you? I thought he had a more than watchful eye on me.

It has been said (by who I don't know but this his quote) "The only rule at a sushi bar is to eat what you like, how you like it, and as much as you like. Anyone who tells you differently is full of it." So there, I like to dip my rice in shoyu, use a separate plate for my shrimp tails and dare to have the ginger sitting next to the pieces of sushi on my plate. And I like wasabi, far more than the itamae deems sufficient.

As I later learned, this was a pretty hardcore restaurant. Of course, you will find in Japan, sushi restaurants that serve Maki-zushi, which are rice and seaweed rolls full of fish and vegetables, which, ding-ding-ding, is a more traditional version of the California or Philadelphia roll, though you will never find cream cheese in anything here. Heresy I suspect. There are many variations of Maki-zushi, Futomaki - thick rolls, Hosomaki - thin rolls and Uramaki - inside out rolls. Nothing is straightforward here in Japan.

I will try again, next time choosing a more liberal restaurant, one that doesn't scare the wasabi out of me, but I did it, I did what all the other kids are doing, I ate sushi. And as any newly de-virginized gal does, practice is going to make perfect.