Fish Heads, Fish Heads, Rolly Polly Fish Heads

My first Japanese "enkai" was on October 17.  An enkai is basically a company party.  This one was the Miki HS English Department's way of welcoming the new ALTs.  Ben and I were invited to have dinner at an Italian restaurant called Osteria dell' Arancio with the English staff.  Matt, the other ALT, and Kellee, a third part time ALT, also joined us for the evening.

The food was amazing!  We had a course meal, so small dishes kept coming until finally our main course.  For dessert, each of us were able to choose from a plate of various cakes and puddings and we all had a cup of specialty coffee in handcrafted coffee mugs.  I chose a pumpkin dessert of course.  This country loves pumpkin in the fall and I take full advantage of that.

I have always taken myself for an adventurous eater, but on that night that idea was challenged.  One of the courses was a fully cooked fish, head and all.  The chef, God bless him, covered the little guy in a shroud of lettuce and vegetables, but there he was, staring up at us all.  Everyone began to enjoy the fish dish as I worked up the courage to try my first whole fish.  Ben, Kellee, and I discussed what could be inside the fish that had such a grainy texture, when it was frankly explained by my husband that it was fish eggs not cornmeal that Kellee had in her mouth.  She was a little put off, but not deterred from enjoying the fish eggs.  At that moment, I decided to go for it.  I would eat the head and get the worst part out of the way.  The rest couldn't be that bad if I just ate the head.  So, I did it.  

I ate the fish head and felt both victory and disgust.  I cannot forget the memory of feeling fish teeth on the end of my tongue and tasting the bitter flavor of the cooked fish skin.  The fish head had a crunch that seemed very carnal as a chewed it.  Once I had swallowed, I could not bear to eat the fish babies stuffed inside the poor fish mother who's head I had just devoured.  So, I passed.

I probably lost some points with the English teachers that day for refusing to eat the rest of the fish, but that doesn't matter to me.  The most important thing I gleamed from my fish eating failure was that sometimes you just have to be honest about what you can handle,  no politely lying to the English staff to save face, no torturing myself with eating fish I did not like.  The second most important thing I learned that day is that my husband is a fish head eating barbarian and likes it.