Japan: Chicken Knees and Raw Fish

My most frequently asked since my arrival on Thursday has undoubtedly been “what’s that?”

The food has all been pretty good. There’s some good stuff and some weird stuff, but nothing that has come as too much of a shock – as long as I’m not eating noodles, noodles and more noodles I’ll be reasonably happy.

I was told we were going to a chicken place on Saturday night. Surely you can’t do anything weird with just chicken, right? Wrong.

A fairly normal chicken skewer with cheese

Green pepper stuffed with ground chicken

Chicken and onion kebabs (lots of fat)

This is where it gets weird - these were "soft bone"

Chicken skin with rice

Sunday was sushi night. I’d never had it before but I figured that nothing there would be as bad as having to gulp down a deep-fried chicken’s knee so I went into it with an open mind. The layout is strange; you’re assigned a table next to the long conveyor belt from which you simply pick what you want. You can also order things directly from the kitchen using the interactive screen on the conveyor and they arrive via a chute.

 Tuna-mayo roll

 Raw salmon, onion and mayo on rice

 Grilled eel on rice

Cucumber roll (left) and raw tuna roll (right)

It’s 9pm on Sunday night as I write this (1pm UK time), so I know that my family will probably be sitting down for a nice roast dinner. It’s making me realise that there are some holes that sushi alone cannot fill.