SUSHI

I love sushi. I don't think I could ever get tired of eating it. I could eat sushi four times a week and think it's not enough, so you could imagine my delight when Yumiko called me and invited me to have dinner with them last night. The menu: SUSHI.

Actually, there are several kinds of sushi which most non-Japanese people are unfamiliar with. When we hear the delicious word, we think of rice rolled in sea weed and stuffed with bits of cucumber and crab, lined with mayonnaise and a pinch of wasabi. Or, we think of cooked and split shrimp laying on a little and longish ball of sticky rice. And sometimes we contemplate why anyone would include "the egg one." (I know you know what I'm talking about.)

Well, here's a small Japanese lesson for you. Sushi actually means, quite literally, vinegared rice. So, here in the homeland, when people invite you over for sushi, you could be getting any variety of rice prepared in vinegar with a little bit of salt, sugar and mirin to boot.

I remember the first dinner party I was invited to on the island. (I crashed the former ALTs going away bash.) I was fresh off the ferry and elated to think I'd be treated to sushi so soon after my arrival. With the rate things were happening, I was sure I'd be eating sushi everyday. My tutelage in sushi and the Japanese language itself pretty much began that night as lifted the lid of the plate my "sushi" was in and found nothing more than a pile of white rice with little bits of shredded egg on top. BUMMER. I ate it and it was, of course, delicious, but very different from what I'd been expecting.

What most westerners call sushi is actually called nigirizushi in Japan. It means "hand-shaped sushi." There's also temakizushi which means "hand-rolled sushi." It's a bit misleading, however, because it's not the California Roll or Spider Roll sushi which you might think, but it's actually a kind of build-it-yourself, cone-like roll that can be filled with anything from canned tuna to slices of omelet. (Again with the egg!) The rolls that we're all familiar with and love are known in Japan as simply makizushi or, "rolled sushi."

Last night I was in luck. For the second time ever on my island, I had the chance to eat home-made nigirizushi -- sushi as I first knew it. Here's the feast in all it's splendor!

Aren't you jealous? Ojika is a sushi-lover's paradise. It's a fish feast! I'm soooooo lucky.