Todd Jay Leonard, Blog
Having lived in Japan for so long, I have become quite acculturated to the Japanese way, including customs, traditions and daily life. There is one particular area, though, that I have never developed a taste for, and that is some types of Japanese food, especially fish.
Unfortunately, I am not a fish-eater, which makes living on an island problematic at best. Many Japanese dishes use some type of piscine or piscatorial flavoring, including fish stock, making it quite difficult at times to find something that is totally fish-free.
Believe me, I have tried to eat just about everything at least once over the years, and if I were to be blindfolded and given a taste test, I swear I would be able to identify the foods that have the minutest amount of fish flavor in them.
Friends always will urge me to taste things I know I clearly will not like.
"Oh, this has no fishy taste at all, trust me. Just try it."
Nanoseconds later, I am disposing of it in a napkin - similar to the way a baby who tastes something it doesn't like, letting the foul-tasting foreign object roll right out of its mouth and onto the floor.
I have stopped humoring people for the sake of politeness. After 20 years of testing this theory, I figure I am rather certain that seafood, or the slightest hint of fish, is not for me.
Onion rings! Yum!
When I first arrived in Japan to live, I remember spying a bag of breaded onion rings in the freezer section at my favorite grocery store. I was so overjoyed that I grabbed the bag up and purchased these wonderful little things.
Once home, I could hardly wait to bake them in order to savor that glorious taste of my childhood (I prefer baking because deep-frying food in hot oil scares me). However, as the succulent-looking onion rings began to bake, an odd aroma filled the air. The more they baked, the stronger the odor became.
I hurriedly opened the oven, pulled out the tray to cut one open to see from what these "onion" rings were made and - horror of horrors - they weren't onion rings at all. I was cooking breaded "squid" rings.
Needless to say, the entire package was promptly put into the garbage and taken outside. A lot of air-freshener product was used to cover the smell of baking squid, which permeated every inch of my apartment.
I learned a very valuable lesson with that experience: When something looks too good to be true, it probably is. I was much more careful in the future when purchasing a product solely based on pictures to show what is contained in the package.
BBQ, sour cream ... seaweed?
I was a slow learner in those early years, I suppose, because I also remember buying a bag of chips that looked to be covered with some type of herb, like basil or sage.
To my chagrin, the chips were sprinkled with flakes of seaweed. Most people who have only a slight aversion to seafood most likely would eat them without noticing. Not me. One bite and I knew it was from the sea. No, thank you.
Often people will order something in a restaurant to share with the table, like pasta, that has clams, tuna or some other type of seafood cooked in the sauce. It amuses me when they recommend I just pick out the big pieces and eat the rest as if it hadn't been there to begin with.
It is akin, in my opinion, to having a smoking section in a restaurant. The idea that the cigarette smoke will stay in one place and not spread is (in the words of a dear Hoosier friend) like having a "peeing section in a swimming pool" - no matter whether it is smoke, urine or fish sauce - it makes no difference. Once it is out in the general area, there is no corralling it back.
If it's from the sea
People sometimes try to fool me ... which is next to impossible.
"Oh, there's no fish in this, promise!" One bite makes me beg to differ, which then prompts the person to say, "Oh, you don't eat tuna either?" (Any myriad of seafood or fish can be substituted for the tuna example: shrimp, oysters, clams, lobster, caviar, ad infinitum.) I really think they are just playing dumb in these cases, because it is astounding that intelligent people (with the exception of Jessica Simpson on her reality show) think that something from the ocean, which lives in water, is not fish.
"Uh, yeah, if it comes from an ocean, river, lake, or creek and swims or lives in the water, I would categorize that as 'fish,' thank you very much." People who know me well don't even try to slip me a dish laced with some sort of fish, no matter how small the amount, because they know that I will detect it. That is a statistical certainty.
Perhaps because Indiana is landlocked (unless you count Lake Michigan in the northern part of the state - and, I might add, it probably isn't a big supplier of fish for human consumption - at least I hope not), or the fact that as a child my family never ate fresh fish are reasons why I just never developed a taste for it.
I figure at the age of 45, I probably won't be developing this taste anytime soon, seeing as I live in a place that is renowned for its fresh fish and gorgeous seafood.
As I mentioned before, over the years, I have tried everything of the fishy variety, and there isn't anything I remotely like. Grilled eel and sea cucumber (trust me, it is not a vegetable) were the most unpleasant things I have ever tasted.
But it was just 30 seconds
Of course, there are people who gobble these delicacies down, licking their lips for more, but not me. Maybe it was the texture I couldn't get past. Eel is very stringy, in my opinion, and sea cucumber was just too chewy. It seemed the more I chewed, the more it multiplied in my mouth ... the most unpleasant 30 seconds of my life, bar nothing else.
Sushi lovers, I'm sure, are bereft at the thought that I could eat sushi every day of the week if I wanted but choose not to do so. Aomori, where I live in Japan, is well known for hotate - scallops.
People come from all over Japan to sample these shelled creatures, sending boxes to friends and family via special refrigerated trucks. People eat them by the dozens. When strangers ask where I live and I mention Aomori, automatically two things come to their minds - scallops and apples. I always gear the conversation toward the apples.
To demonstrate how much of a purist I am, once when I was served a cold mug of beer, I took one sip and had to set it down. The mug it came in was molded from squid, which, after the beer is gone, can be eaten like beef jerky. A waste of a good mug of beer, in my opinion, not to mention the squid glass it came in.
To counteract any do-gooders who undoubtedly tried to convert me into a fish-eater during my current stint of living in Japan, I confidently informed everyone early on that I was terribly allergic to seafood and fish. This worked like a charm. No one ever tried to force fish on me again. Some people even went as far as sniffing out the slightest hint of seafood, becoming a sort of "fish" detective on my behalf, ensuring that I not get hold of anything that had the least bit of fish in it.
Once this is published, I suppose my cover will be blown.
I'm not worried about anyone trying to get me to eat any fish product, because I still have a few tricks up my sleeve to avoid fish-related situations. These, however, will remain a secret to keep people on their guard.
By TODD JAY LEONARD
Columnist
The old man and the (grrrgh!) seafood
There’s something fishy going on in Japan, and it ain’t the beer — no, wait, it’s in the beer, too
Thursday, September 27 , 2007
