We are on the Northern Island of Hokkaido. We took the bullet train from Sendai, which included a ride under the ocean. There is a train tunnel that is 100m below the seabed – the underwater portion is just over 23 km long.
We are staying in Hakodate and are only a few blocks away from the morning market. Wilf had a plan – he had heard that somewhere in the market you could catch a squid and they would turn it into squid sashimi for your breakfast. We set off this morning to see if this was true. It a busy space, with a central building and then spilling into the streets for several blocks. Lots of merchants standing in front of their shops offering ‘asa gohan’ – breakfast. And wow! The selection on offer! The northern waters produce squid and crabs and salmon, all of which was on display.
And the produce! It’s melon season, so there were lots of $60 melons, but also lots of less expensive ones – also by the slice. And chestnuts and apples and mushrooms.
We wandered about having trouble finding the restaurant Wilf was aiming for and decided on one that said they had live squid sashimi. So in we went.
The waitress spoke about as much English as I do Japanese but we managed. Every so often I can produce a whole sentence rather than just disjointed words, which causes much surprise. We spent a lot of time last year in my Japanese class working on restaurant ordering, including the phrase ‘お勧めはなんですか‘、which means ‘what would you suggest?’ That has turned out to be a useful sentence!
After Wilf ordered his live squid sashimi the waitress said ‘Ika (squid)…. Fishing?. Wilf was out the door right behind her. He’d been reading up on how to do this. The trick is to catch the squid in a way that doesn’t cause it to get mad and squirt ink.
Step 1:
Step 2
Step 3
Ta Da!
All the people in the shops along the street were watching to see if the old gaijin could catch a squid and he did very quickly! Big round of applause from the folks on the street.
A few minutes later:
Since we are in the land of crab and salmon I had a rice bowl with salmon sashimi and sweet crab
Wilf also had a grilled scallop.
And I’m not sure if they were testing us (him) because a dish of, well there’s no easy way to say this, fish guts appeared. (Which included some pantomime on my part to assure the waitress we knew what it was. And we did because it was on the breakfast menu in Aizu – it was one of the few things we didn’t take a liking to.)
There were other people in the restaurant having their breakfast, and once we got our food ordered we started to pay attention to the table beside us. Big table – eight or nine guys sitting there. The waitress was on to her third chit tracking their order as they pounded through a mountain or seafood, including the giant king crab legs at $48 a pop. At 09:00 one of the got up and came back with a tray of mugs filled with highballs – looked like whiskey sours. They looked like something out of the Sopranos – flashy clothes, expensive food, guys coming and going. They seemed somewhat amused by us, when they deigned to notice us. Seems we stumbled into the local hangout of ‘The Boys”
Back out tin the market – some more of the seafood on display
We’ve had splendid fish and seafood all over Japan, but this was next level!
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