Strange food in Japan......

Someone asked what was my most memorable food eating experience ( or in my case sometimes 3rd party experience) was in Japan. Frankly, it was not the standard run of the mill TEMPURA * YUCKS*. Thinking back, i remember two meals that really strike me as DAMN TASTY that i never forgot. Unfortunately i do not have pictures of one of the meals as it was group food sharing style - ARGH....

In one of our stops, which was in Nagoya, dinner that night was quite an experience. It was a bar style eating or what Japanese called Izakaya. Imagine, on a tour they take you to Izakaya. It is a drinking establishment... serving food that only goes well with alcohol. I must say the aunties and uncles that were in the trip found this experience pretty much amazing for them. Shock for them when fried rice is considered a beer food. For the life of me, i cannot remember the name of the place but can remember how to get to this restaurant. Sad hor.

Anyway, i must say the food was excellent that night - no pictures because we had dinner at 9:30 and not the usual 8 and everyone was well past starved. However, they served up something very interesting in their Sashimi platter. This plate of stuff costs 990 YEN. 100 yen is RM3.20 which according to Mashi it is DIRT cheap! Pity she can't eat leh... *snicker- go drool some more*


This was the arrangement that came - 1/2 eaten already, i was just not interested in raw food but look closely at the red piece of meet that is used as part of the sashimi. Can you guess what kinda meet this is?
It is not beef, not pork, not kangaroo or emu... but it is Horse meat. The japanese call it Sakuraniku for it's redness and niku well means meat. Now i did a google on horse meat and found that not only japanese eat horse meat but lots of country as well. Me? Nope. I keep seeing black beauty running in front of me.

Well back to the topic. Japan as you know, eat a lot of strange things, besides the raw fish, bee larvae as well bees are consumed here. So horse meat, pah, nothing new. Horse meat is normally served only in izakayas as raw form also known as basashi or part of the yakitori- so becareful what you eat. And basashi is served on top of shiso leaves.

I have to say, i really really did not try this. Cannot stomach. Even the more adventurous girls in the table said no. Apologies, my mind may think something but my mouth cannot take it. So, the 3 men in the table, which was Becks, Mr X and Y ate most of it. First try, i saw most of them dipping it heavily into soy sauce.

So i timidly ask them - how? Their verdict - tender, tasty and sweet... In fact, they ate all. The girls were just a bit too put off to eat it.

Me: -____________________________________________________-"""


Overall, besides the horse meat, we had UNI fried rice. Wah, luxury leh. But the dishes otherwise was excellent and worthy of many visits, if i was still in Japan. Sorry, no pictures - it was pretty dark in the Izakaya, these were the only good shots.

Where to eat this:

Some izakaya opposite Mitsukoshi in Nagoya - cannot remember name :P