More food adventures!

This past week I got to try natto for the first time. It's a food Japan is (in?)famous for. It consists of fermented soybeans.

Natto, aka fermented soybeans

Alright, so it's got a reputation for being nasty, but some people obviously like it because it's pretty popular over here. Stores are selling it because people are buying. So when it was served with breakfast the other day, I said sure, I'll try it.

Good thing I did, now I know to avoid it. O_O

I have a friend who likes it, and she says if you just get past the smell it tastes fine. As far as I'm concerned, that's the same as saying once you get past the taste, it tastes fine.

Also, as you can see in the picture, it does this funky thing where it sticks together with fine strands of fermentedieness (yup, that's a word, 'cuz I said so). The Japanese actually have a verb for it: neba neba suru. This neba neba business makes it difficult to eat gracefully.

Ok, so onto a good food story! (I think natto is really the only thing I've disliked so far, and I've been trying everything).

Last night I went out with some of the other HIF students to celebrate someone's birthday. We ended up eating at a donburi restaurant. Donburi can be a variety of different foods served over rice. For example katsudon is pork over rice, and tamagodon is egg over rice. Last night I had oyakodon (親子丼).

Oyakodon

What's in oyakodon, you ask? Well, you've got to look at the kanji that make up the name. First, 親 (oya) means parent. The second, 子(ko) means child.

Hm, this is beginning to sound a bit morbid, huh?

It's actually just chicken and egg, chicken being the "parent" and egg being the "child". For some reason last semester we talked about this in Japanese class, so I was wise to it when I ordered. When I told my host parents that I had eaten oyakodon, they asked if I knew what the name meant. They found it quite amusing that I did. (They find a lot of things amusing, like my distaste for natto). X)

Anyway, that's it for now. Hopefully I'll get pictures uploaded from our visit to the Jomon Archaeological site soon and be able to post about that. :)