Horrors of Enkai - Part 1: How to frighten a Ninja.By Dave Collins - Yonezawa
As I sit down at the low low tables of Izakaya X, I am greeted by an elegant arrangement of food. For the moment though, only one dish demands attention. To the left of me sits shirako - raw cod testicles *. These beauties take on the appearance of a pile of off-white blobs covered in a network of angry pink veins. The veins extend from a central clump of thicker tissue and spider out across the glistening surface membrane. A true expression of function over form.
I look around for some sort of cooking tool with which to vapourise the balls, but before I can say "OH... SWEET... HOLY SHIT-F-F-F-FUCKER!" (that came shortly afterwards), one of the ladies at my table had schlumped down a testicle, and was already eyeing up a replacement to cram into her sushi aperture.
Great. There I am, staring at a bowl of organs. Its quite possible that I didn't blink for a good minute of so, kind of like a low paid extra lying in a morgue playing 'wide awake' dead. I'm usually game for trying out new and unusual foods, but this is just goddamn unnecessary. You know, in much the same way that I know I will not enjoy jumping off the top of the Empire State Building onto a bicycle with the seat removed, I know that scoffing down fish floppily-doppilies will not make me a happy camper.
It came to my attention afterwards that quite a few Japanese people won't eat this stuff. I could be wrong, but it seems to be the sort of thing that must have started as a dare. Probably between Ninjas. For example:
Ninja #1: "Aha, my good friend. We meet again. Do you accept the shirako challenge?"
[Ninja #2 backflips off the top of a castle and lands silently on a single blade of grass]
Ninja #2: "......"
[30 dead crows - their eyeballs plucked out - fall to the ground, a common casualty of backflipping ninjas]
Ninja #2: "The testicle things?"
Ninja #1: "That is correct."
Ninja #2: "Couldn't I just tattoo my tongue with a porcupine wrapped around a skunk, twice dipped in fecal matter?
Ninja #1: "Hmmmm... hang on, I'll add that to the list. Nope, sorry, the original dare stands.
Ninja #2: "Lets not and say we did."
Ninja #1: "Yeah, okay."
Presumably, Japanese people came pretty close to having two dead animals dunked in a bowl of shit becoming a delicacy.
Pictured: The only photo I could take with my keitai before the lense cracked and my phone burst into flames.
Not pictured: Richard Simmons doing squat-thrusts 15cm from the mouth of a hungry crocodile.
*Note: Shirako was the name that was used when I asked someone what the hell this stuff was. I was assured that it was not intestines or anything else, but testicles. Wikipedia has a different take on things however, describing Shirako as:
1. Sperm the of fish [go-go-gadget grammar!]
2. A town in Chiba Prefecture
3. Albino
I don't think anyone could fit an entire town in their mouth at once. I also think I would have noticed if I had been served a bowl of sperm, so I can only assume that by Wikipedia's definition I was given the remains of an albino. Probably a child.
Wikipedia link:
End of Part 1. | 
