Tuesday, August 02, 2005
gizzards and shell guts and cow tongues OH MY. GOD.

mood: x_x
listening to: Japanese TV...once again ;-;

I woke up at 11:30 and decided to read a bit of my Sailormoon manga. At 12:30 I decided it was time to head upstairs. Host Madre was all worked up about my breakfast being at lunch time. I kept telling her it was fine. o.O; I dunno if she listened or not.

Rei had handball practice until 3:00, so I was free to do whatever in that time. So I think that's when I blogged about Disneyland. However, I also read my manga and stuff, so I ran out of time to blog about all of this other stuff.

At 4:00 or so we went to Osu, which is this really cool place with thrift stores and cheap shops all lined up on about 3 streets. The area is really cool, and it, surprisingly was heavily gaijin populated. I even saw some real Japanese (and foreign) cosplayers, since I think the world cosplay convention thing was in Nagoya that day. For some reason, I dunno where I read that.

We shopped for a while. I ended up buying a seifuku bow and a pair of hot camo pants. Both of which were on my list of things to buy, so I don't feel THAT guilty...the pants were actually half off, since there was a sale, so I got them for 4000 yen instead of 8000 yen. W00TS! However, now I only have 10000 yen left (about $100) and I still have to buy my ion dryer, curler, and other things. Like new SM manga. LOL.

After spending a while in Osu, Host Padre took us to a steak house nearby. Apparently it's very famous. It's also very small and black.

When we got inside we ate at the bar where the chefs where all cooking in this small little space. The first thing in the course? Raw steak, sashimi style. So yes, people. I ate raw steak. Yes, I ate it with some wasabi. Yes, I knew you weren't wondering that.

After that I decided that this dinner could get a LOT better, or a LOT worse. Either one or the other. Well, obviously it was the latter.

Next was some meat thing. It looked pretty familiar. Why? Because it was the same gizzard thing that Rei asked me if I wanted the day before at Tsukuneya. I was forced to eat it. I had not choice. I knew then it was going to be a long night.

The next dish was some shell stuff. I had the abalone, fine. However, some specialty of theirs is literally the abalone's GUTS. I'm not kidding you. So they almost made me eat some shell guts, but I was like "no thanks, I think I'll pass." Meanwhile Host Madre is all like "OISHII!!!!!!!" which means delicious. Japanese people like to exclaim that, and "ATSUI!!" which means hot. Since it's really hot outside right now.

Anyways, I decided that after shell guts it couldn't get any worse. I mean, what else could they make me eat that is WORSE than shell guts?

Well, lemme tell you. When the chef brought over thin pentagon shaped strips of meat, I had NO IDEA what the hell was in store for me. I asked, out of curiosity and suspiciousness what the strips were, but Host Madre kept saying she forgot. And I BELIEVED HER. (never again...)

After about, I dunno, 7 pieces each, we were finished with that dish. It was then I heard Host Padre say one word. And that word, my friends, was "TONGUE."

Yes, people. My host family tricked me into eating cow tongue. WHY WAS I SO GULLIBLE??? OH WHY????? I'm so scarred for life. I sat there sitting in my chair, shaking my head at my own stupidity for the next hour.

Luckily nothing worse came after that, but the damage was already done. I had some pretty good tenderloin, but I couldn't get my mind off the fact that I ate 7 pieces of cow tongue.

After that we headed home. I was still in disbelief about the tongue the entire way home.

Host Madre said that the next day we were going to Expo. That meant waking up at 5:50. AM. Why? Because the lines there are killer. I swear to you, the entire Expo is like one giant line to wait in. You spend most of your time waiting than actually DOING anything. But I'll get to the Expo later. For now I shall take a small manga break. ^.~

JA.

-Erin