Wriggle squirm chew! Eating Live Fish in Noto

"I am so excited, I am going to eat live fish in Noto on Sunday!"
"Oh, you mean, like, sashimi?"
"No! Not raw fish, LIVE fish. Fish that are STILL ALIVE!"

I had this conversation a few times over the past week as I excitedly prepared to chomp over two dozen live little fishies at Chanko Nabe Ichihin Ryouri RIKI, a restaurant in Anamizu. I really had no idea what to expect, but I have been extremely curious for several years, ever since an old KIRO coworker showed me a video of him in a Tokyo restaurant pinching a flipping fish between a pair of chopsticks.

What I did not expect was a modest little family restaurant with a small aquarium on it's counter. It was absolutely bustling with tiny, transparent fish called isaza, plucked from the Sea of Japan just down the road. I also didn't expect the fish to look as though they were smiling. We put in an order and padded it with some snapper sashimi, local fish and vegetable tempura-don, and grilled oysters and leeks with butter.

As you will see in the video, I came into the experience a little bit cocky. I had no idea that I would be initially terrified of the little fish, squirming, wriggling and splashing around in the bowl of water before me. They were either saying "Please please eat me! Pick me! Pick me!" or "Holy shit! We have to escape NOW!" Despite what the folks at PETA might say, fish can't talk or make facial expressions, so it was impossible to tell what they were going on about but clearly they were freaking the fuck out about something. So was I. They were smiling, they were slippery and I was about to kill them with my teeth.

Turns out it only takes about two little fish to change me from a wimp into a savage. Soon enough I was holding one in my mouth before chewing, feeling it flip and frolic about like a bouncy ball let loose in a racquetball court. Sometimes I swallowed them whole, disappointed when I didn't feel them wriggling down my throat and swimming around in my stomach. By the end, full from the rest of our meal and still marveling at the amazing oysters, I just wanted to get rid of the last four little suckers. One by one I chopsticked them into my soy sauce, added a little water, and shot the whole thing back. I let them swim around inside my soy mouth aquarium before chewing them up and swallowing them down.



Here's a quick little shorty:























One more if you just haven't had enough. This one's pretty entertaining:

Teacher's Pet

In the first grade I was a teacher's pet. I absolutely adored Mrs Reding, my red headed & freckled teacher who had a particular penchant for Garfield paraphernalia. At recess I had to fight off the other little goody-two-shoes girls in order to attain the ultimate Teacher's Pet Honor: holding one of Mrs Reding's hands as she walked around the playground busting little boys for doing naughty things. My family moved across the city after 1st grade, so I had to change schools, but I would visit Mrs Reding about once a year and bring her a pack of Garfield pencils. She even attended my Bat Mitzvah. She was the one, and I would never love another teacher quite as much. My career as a teacher's pet was short and sweet; it ended after a single year at Fairlands Elementary School.

But, 25 years later, it appears I am back to my old eager-to-please school girl ways. I realized this the other morning at my monthly cooking class as I painstakingly sliced carrots into uniform matchsticks.

"Very nice!" said Chieko, one of my cooking teachers, admiring the mound of orange shreds. I beamed a little too much. I longed to buy her a Garfield pencil.

From my very first class, months ago, I had an agenda: to befriend the middle aged cooking teachers, get them to teach me private lessons, and learn a bit about Japanese culture through their stories and recipes. It seems my stored-up teacher's pet powers are still strong since all of these things have come true. Chi-chan, a tell-it-like-it-is tough cookie of a grandmother (right), calls herself my "Japanese mom," has taken me on a couple of adventures and buys me gifts when she goes on weekend trips. Emi-chan, the always sweet and smiling grandma, gives me little photo collages of our experiences together and treats from her small garden. A true pet, I have reciprocated with chocolates, ice cream and crunchy snacks. 

On Thursday, Yoko and I arrived at the monthly group cooking class expecting the usual scene: a kitchen crowded with clucking hens chopping up vegetables and stirring bubbling pots. But it was only Emi-chan and Chi-chan. Strangely, no one else was coming this week. It was a teacher's pet dream! There would be no fighting for the choice cooking tasks and I could easily watch each dish come together from start to finish. We tied on our aprons and got to work preparing two home-style main dishes for a group of hungry lunchers: chirashi-zushi and kara age (pronounced: Car-uh ah-gay), Japanese fried chicken.



In Seattle, chirashi-zushi was a bowl of warm sushi rice covered with slices of raw fish and, if I was lucky, a heaping spoonful of shiny orange salmon eggs. But apparently there isn't always fish involved. Our version was vegetarian and involved carrot, shitake and gobo (burdock root) stirred into piping hot sushi rice. Each bowl was then topped with slices of rincon (lotus root, pictured) and ribbons of thin, crepe-like omelet. We garnished with shreds of shiso leaf, chopped snow peas and pickled ginger. Each bite was like a little rainbow: the red ginger, orange carrot, yellow egg and green shiso. It was simple, beautiful and took far longer to prepare than I expected since each vegetable is boiled separately in water spiked with different flavors.

For me, fried chicken falls into the same category as sour cream and onion dip and Lil Smokies: unsophisticated, unhealthy, delicious foods that I never make at home but will gleefully inhale at a party. Japanese fried chicken is exceptionally yummy; small chunks of thigh meat marinated in classic Japanese flavors and fried until the outside is golden and the inside ridiculously juicy. It is often served with undressed lettuce leaves and, in this case, wedges of tomato to counteract the artery clogging oil.

Maybe it was the magic of fried chicken that cast a spell on my teachers and caused a true miracle to happen at the end of this cooking session. Chi-chan hugged me. She hugged me. First! Without prompting! Let me explain. Japanese people are not particularly affectionate and they absolutely do not hug or kiss each other in public. I started hugging the ladies months ago. At first they responded by standing stiffly, arms at their sides, with frozen smiles on their faces as I squeezed their tense bodies. As the months went by they gradually loosened up and reciprocated with a little back pat or maybe a sideways squeeze, but I was always always the initiator. Until Thursday. Chi-chan hugged me goodbye. It was just as good as holding her hand during recess.