Grotesque Food 2: Shirako

On Thursday night I tripped out through the gathering snow with the Maths kids for a dinner interlude at Hokkaido Sushi. While sitting at the counter ruing my backsliding Japanese, I noticed a dish going by which looked like a pile of ice cream sitting on seaweed. I read its name wrong when asking my friend, but he told me it is called Shirako. Fortunately for you dear reader, I do not have a picture of this supposedly fantastic food, but you can find one if you look through the seedier spots of the web.

The reason I say seedier, my friends, is because Shirako is literally fish's cum. Appropriately to some previous posts on this blog, it is usually the cum of a cod, an anglerfish or a pufferfish. Sometimes it is cooked, although I have a sneaking suspicion that in a sushi restaurant it is, like most food in such restaurants, raw. I am told by Japanese people that it is delicious, but I have yet to find a Japanese person eating any at a restaurant. Maybe it serves the same role in Japan that tripe does in the West.

In my opinion, a willingness to eat Natto, an appreciation of sliminess in food, and a taste for (possibly raw) fish sperm may explain this. In any case, I have been led by my exposure to this particular food to consider the development of, as Donald Duck would say, a new metric for consideration of known unknowns. If a group of people are willing to eat fish cum (raw or not), they are radically different to me. Next time you are considering something strange that you have heard about Japan (and once you have discounted the possibility that it is a gaijin myth), if it seems inexplicable and just plain confusing, remember: they eat fish cum.

That should explain it!