Yea, it's a national holiday! And for once, I have nothing to do. Time to update my blog with pictures of wonderful Japanese foodstuffs.



I almost posted the picture upside down, but I caught myself just in time as I looked at the kanji writing. "Whew, that was a close one. I almost looked pretty stupid," I thought. And then I realized, "how would they know the difference?"

I'm sorry, I'm too American for this to ever, EVER look appetizing. Ever.

This was in my school provided lunch one day. Kind of looks like moldy little bits of thin steak, doesn't it? But what is it really?

Yup, it's whale. And this helpful chart lets you know what part of the whale you're eating. Yum.

This actually looks quite disgusting to me with all the mushrooms and whatnot, and it's not helped along by the fact that there's a raw egg in a bowl next to it. But this is, by far, my favorite Japanese food. It's called Sukiyaki (okay, everyone my parent's age and older can stop singing that song now), and it's just a bunch of vegetables boiled in a sweet soy sauce. You get 4 or 5 people around a pot like this, and you add the vegetables and meat to the pot. Then everyone just reaches in with their chopsticks and pulls stuff out. Once you get something, you dip it in the raw egg in your bowl to cool it down a little, then eat it. Sounds gross, but my friends who visited 2 years ago can attest to the fact that it's actually really, really good.