I spent the weekend at my aunt and uncle's house to go see a kpop concert and that was super amazing but that's not what you are here for, is it?
So the aunt and uncle I stayed with are the ones that speak Japanese (I have a lot of aunts and uncles) and while I didn't speak much Japanese with them (I don't know much and am too shy), something I did to to expand my horizons was try new foods that are more common in Japan. We went out to eat with my aunt, uncle, and more family that lives across the street (it's so cool) a couple times and while I'm normally cautious with what I try I just told my aunt my allergies and let her order stuff for me. I trust her to not make me try something gross and she was so excited to have me try everything.
First night we went to a Korean barbecue (my first time) and my aunt ordered everything and manned the grill. She recommended what sauces I could eat and what was good with what (beef with thinly sliced daikon radish is so good). It was really cool to see a cook your own food style restaurant considering that isn't super common here in the US. My aunt said it is very normal in Japan and she went to restaurants like that when she lived there. Now just the type of restaurant was entirely new to me and then some interesting stuff was ordered and put on my plate. I wasn't crazy about any of it, but I'll definitely be trying it again. To my limited American pallet, the least odd of the new meats was beef tongue. I live on a farm so that sort of thing is possible for us to order when we get our cows butchered but in general we don't eat it. People who buy from us will order it, though. It was thinly sliced so it wasn't too different from normal beef. Still tasted a little different, though. Maybe a bit like liver, which I don't like so I wasn't super motivated to try more. The next one in my how weird list is squid. It was a flat sheet so it just looked like a hunk of fish. Apparently my grandma and uncle used to get it and tell the rest of my mom's family it was fish XD. It was probably my favorite of the new meats. For some strange reason I liked the texture and the taste was pretty good too. The weirdest, in my opinion, was baby octopus. So there were literally small whatever-the-plural-of-octopus-is-I-have-heard-so-many-different-answers on the grill. A small leg was put on my plate and while I didn't exactly want to try it I was on a mission to try new foods I grabbed it with my chopsticks and ate it. The texture was a little weird and you can feel the little suction cup things, but it wasn't bad. Wasn't too motivated to have another piece but I do plan on trying all of these again.
The next night we went to a Japanese restaurant near my aunt's work and she ordered stuff for everyone, in Japanese even! It was really interesting hearing her talk to the waitresses and I could pick out some of the words and it was really cool. The only slightly odd to my American pallet thing I tried was raw fish, which I'm pretty sure I have had before. Probably my favorite thing there was the fried rice, which we were given spoons to eat it with. To be honest the thing I'm best at eating with chopsticks is rice but I still used a spoon. The food was quite good and my favorite part of the experience was hearing my aunt and uncle talk to the waitresses in Japanese.
Just a note here but I've been eating with chopsticks every day for the past month or more and I still was not good at chopsticks compared to the rest of my family. Thought I was doing pretty good but it looks like I still have a lot of work to do :).
And the last thing we ate out was ice cream and I was going to order a normal flavor but my aunt suggested I try taro so I said sure and that got ordered. Taro is purple potato, by the way. None of the flavors our group ordered were normal by American standards. We ordered green tea, black sesame, and taro flavored ice cream. I tried them all and just saying but mine was the best. It was a really pretty light purple and tasted interesting and sweet. Everyone kept stealing from mine so that's a pretty good indication that it's good XP.
This was basically just me talking about what foods I tried this weekend but the moral of the story here is to go try some stuff that is normal in Japan so you can get used to it and find what you like before you get there. If you have a friend or relative who you trust to pick out good stuff for you to try go out to eat with them. My aunt was very happy to share what she liked with me so I'm sure people would be happy to help you pick out something good.
On a side note, now I'm going to go look for taro ice cream in the grocery store because that was really good. Maybe if I had tried taro ice cream a couple years ago instead of azuki beans this blog would be called Taro Ice Cream. Doesn't have quite the same ring to it but both are really tasty ice cream flavors and I highly recommend them.
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