A Tale of Ordinary Madness:

Iwakuni and back again

So Iwakuni was a cool place, fun day. Jessica, from Reno, is working with Aeon and is stationed(?) there. It's a 740 yen train ride, takes about 40 mins. Nothin', yeah? We checked out the huge cool bridge there, and had plans for the castle as well. Well, we missed the cutoff for the ropeway so saw the white snakes instead. (Man, it is snowing like hell here by the way)
We were eating at this very japanese place, and there was only one other person there, this 60 something year old drunk guy.

He bought us some sake, we thoroughly thanked him, and i talked to him in japanese for a bit. Talking isn't really the correct word.. more like i listened, and didn't understand. Anyways, then this tray of fugu comes to us that's from him! Fugu is the blowfish, pictured below.










It's super expensive, and super poisonous. We had it raw, too. Afterwards my cheeks were burning, and i felt sort of dizzy and high. But not really in a good way ~ i dunno. It was awesome though. So we're trying to leave, he's spouting off stuff, and jessica says "I think he's saying something about a taxi..." and sure enough we go outside to head to our bus and there's a taxi there. He's like "dozo, dozo, dozo, shinpainai yo!" "here you go, please, don't worry!" I shrugged at Jessica, and we got in the taxi, sort of asking each other if we had any idea of what was happening. Then he says "my house is near, don't worry" so i'm like "holy cow jessica we're going to this guy's house!"
Well we got there, he tells us to wait, disappears for a few minutes while we're hanging out in the taxi, then he runs out with his little old lady wife in an apron and stuff and he said "we're only going to have a few drinks"
So we pulled up to this little bar with this stereotypical looking japanese izakaya owner (pictured below) They tried to get us to eat more, i had some sort of "delicacy" which was this long thing in this brown sauce. I think it was some sort of fish guts soaking in it's own feces. It was probably the most disgusting thing I've ever had, because it really tasted like fecal sauce, but i had to chew on this slimy thing with my mouth full of it. It was awful, they're looking at me and i'm telling jessica in english "this is the most disgusting thing i've ever had, just don't eat it. I might throw up right now" dead serious. Ugh. Anywys, the shochu was good, and of course it was all paid for. And what a bizarre day that was!!

posted by Dan @ 7:50 PM