Ok, dude. You first.

 

Jason and I were watching a cooking show - I think it was "The Taste" and Anthony Bourdain brought his contestant to an "izakaya." Its a Japanese style restaurant, he said. Upon doing some research I found out that "izakaya" literally translates to "bar with food." Sounds like my kind of place. We had never been and really had never heard of it so we began our search. Jason asked a couple of guys at work if they knew of any good izakayas and low and behold, they had! We got a baby-sitter and began our walk to the Araha Beach area where it is located. This is what is nice about living where we live. Almost everything is within walking distance. It rules. During my research I found that izakayas are almost always tiny, little, hole-in-the-wall places with red paper lanterns near the entry. We saw a couple on our walk but decided to continue to the one that was recommended. I couldn't tell you the name of the place because there wasn't an English translation. All I can say is that we were the only Americans there and it was packed. This is always a good sign that you're at the right place. It was a small restaurant with some booths outside covered in plastic sheets because you never know when the torrential rain might start falling. Inside there were about 6 tables and bar seating. The tables were the tatomi style tables (you are basically sitting on the floor cross-legged under a short-legged table). We opted for the bar seats thinking we might be able to strike up conversation with some Japanese folks (like you might strike up conversation in any bar across America - isn't that why people go to bars?).



 

We sat down and got our menus. Hm... not much English here either. The drink menu had more translations than the food. We ordered a couple of Moscow mules, excited to recognize something. Unfortunately the mules didn't come in the usual copper cups. They were in glass mugs. They tasted excellent though, so we weren't complaining too much. With our drinks came a large chunk of ice cold tofu sprinkled with dried fish. Jason wasn't too fond of it, but I don't mind tofu so I ate it right up. We wouldn't want to be rude.

I don't know why Jason is covering those up.
This is the tofu.

So we began our search through the menu for what to order and Jason noticed a "combination platter" on the bottom of the menu. Comes with 18 skeweres. This is how the izakayas serve their food. Shiskabob style cooked over charcoal. I was hesitant to order some strange combination of food as we wouldn't know ahead of time what we were putting into our mouths. I reluctantly agreed remembering we had some leftovers at our house in case there was nothing I felt comfortable eating. After the Moscow mules were gone we decided to switch to Japanese beer. I can't recall which one we had, probably Asahi or Kirin Beer, either are always delicious. They were cold and bubbly and came in tall glasses so we were good with that.



There was a young Japanese couple on our left hand side, but still had not even glanced in our general direction. I started to realize that the rule of generally not looking in anyone else's direction holds true even in a bar. It is considered rude to look at other people and also to eavesdrop on the conversation. Needless to say, we were not going to be striking up any conversations here. Bummer!

Our food came shortly after we had switched to beer. A small plate heaping with mini-skewers, called yakitori, were strewn across our plate. The very top one being a small fish. Yes, a whole fish. Head, eyes, tail. Um... I think we made a mistake. Jason's rule was that we had to at least try everything. Ok, dude. You first. He took a bite of the fish and almost immediately spit it into a napkin. I reluctantly tried it even though it was obviously disgusting. Yep. I swallowed mine. I don't know why. My description: That tasted like death. Next please.

The mini-fish skewer was by far the worst one of the bunch. I don't know why they would put it on top. Maybe its a specialty? Who knows. After that experience, I was still willing to try the others (although, I don't know why). The next one we picked up was just a chicken skewer in some kind of marinade. Delicious. Another delicious one after that and so on. Eventually we got one with a weird red sauce on the top. It was chicken so we each ate a chunk. Hm... weird. Tastes rotten. After reviewing the menu and looking at pictures we discover it is a "fermented plum sauce." Yep. Rotten. No thanks.

After that one they got weirder and weirder. At one point I was chewing on something (it had to be an organ of some kind) and thinking I don't know what this is, but its chewy and still sort of good. When I first learned that I was moving to Okinawa - the first Japanese phrase I wanted to learn was, "vegetarian" because I assumed I would be wimpy to try anything and that it would all be disgusting. I have never once said that Japanese word, actually I don't remember it.

Japanese meatballs = delicious

Me eating weird food

Japanese menu