1/5/08 Kyoto/Tokyo- pig heart on a skew and "gut hot pot"

Today we woke up and had a HUGE Japanese breakfast in the ryokan- multiple kinds of fish, eggs, tofu, rice, miso soup, pickled veggies- it was fantastic. We then headed for the Kyoto train station and checked out the food portion of a department store. They have one floor with prepared food- again it is very high quality and there are so many choices its hard to decide. On another floor they had sake, tea, cakes, other sweets and tons more stuff- all displayed perfectly and there the ratio of sales person to customer was infinitely higher than in the US. We bought some gifts for Kuniko's parents and some lunch for the train ride. I bought a bento box that had a baby octupus like thing and a bunch of other stuff- see video and picture below.



In the evening we went out to dinner with Kuniko's friends and I consumed a large number of items that I wouldn't have dreamed of eating. We started at one restaurant and had this dark green/brownish paste looking stuff on cucumber- I intentionally ate it before finding out what it is- the inside (guts) of a crab- I wasn't fond of it- especially the texture. After that we had sashimi. Then they brought out this little grill and we grilled 3 different items on it- thin slices of the mountain yam- which I didn't mind so much initially- after you chew it turns into a slimy substance in your mouth- not much flavor. We also grilled these little orange disc like things- sea urchin guts flattened out and dried- I would say they were sort of like the crab guts- not so good. Lastly we grilled a small pancake of the little tiny fish which I liked even if I could see their little eyeballs. We then got monk fish liver- I am not much of fan of this stuff. After that we got a salad- which I found out after was thin slices of blowfish skin. I don't mind some skin on fish but a salad containing large amounts of it isn't so great for me. The saving grace to the whole meal was the sake we had. Kuniko's friend is big time into sake and knows all of these great small sake breweries. After this we headed to a whole in the wall restaurant that is known for it's gut hot pot. We started with skewers of pig heart- I wasn't crazy about the taste and texture

Skewered pig heart
After the heart we got a small cucumber salad with ume (salty plum) and then came the gut hot pot- miso soup with pig stomach and colon. Honestly both didn't taste bad. The colon is pretty chewy. The hardest part of the experience is getting over the concept of the food.
Next came skewered pig colon with sauce. They actually don't taste bad- they are very rubbery and chewy- again you have to sort of not think about the fact that these chewy morsels once contained pig shit in them
Yummmy pig colon!

I was very proud of myself for 2 reasons- 1. I tried everything. 2. most importantly I didn't throw up in front of Kuniko's friends. Each of her 3 friends were really cool. One of them used to work for the bullet train (and even learned how to drive them) so I learned all kinds of interesting things like it's a pretty regular event for people to commit suicide by jumping in front of the bullet train and they don't stop the train because they run every 3 minutes. Her other friend produces TV shows and is very flashy in his clothing selection and personality- he was very amusing. The sake conoissoir is pretty laid back. All of them were really friendly.