Every once in a while I’m reminded suddenly that…I live in Japan. It could be a sudden earthquake causing my Star Wars figures to fall over, all too common in this volcanically active country, or seeing a woman in a traditional kimono expertly punching out out a text message on her high-tech cell phone. The other evening I was putting my dishes away in my mother-in-law’s kitchen and saw something you don’t normally encounter: a freshly severed octopus tentacle, waiting to be served for dinner as sashimi. Octopus — called tako in Japanese, no relation to the Mexican food which is incidentally referred to as tacos, using the plural to separate them from the cephalopod version — is a fairly common food in Japan, and I enjoy a good tako salad as much as a taco salad. But I usually take my octopus cut up into slices, sitting on sushi or inside delicious takoyaki balls, and don’t see fresh, wet tentacles all that often.
Sometimes I’m reminded of the fact that I actually live in Japan.
