I had an interesting discussion earlier about eating raw fish. No not sushi. That has rice and seaweed and other stuff. I'm talking about sashimi, pronounced sah-she-me. I was reminded of an interesting experience from my military days. Now I've been around here for a little while now and I've posted most all of my "Stories". I thought I'd share this one with ya.
From April of 1963 to May of 1964 ( and before I was reclassified and retrained as a field corpsman) I was a dental technician with the third Marine Division and stationed on Okinawa. These guys decided to do a little foul weather training in January and February of '64 and they chose a great place to test out their skills. The base of Mt. Fuji Japan. The weather there at that time of year is definitely FOUL! The Dentist I was working for and I were "volunteered" to go as part of the medical support for this training exercise.
It has just occurred to me that I did post a thing that happened to me there a few months ago. If you want to do a search and refresh the memory the title of the post was "Adventures At The Bar First Chance.
ANYHOO....If I remember correctly I gave quite a bit of detail on the weather so I'll skip all that this time. The subject for this'n will be a young girl that worked in the barber shop on base. A lot of the locals were employed on base in the PX and Barber shop and hobby shop etc.
One day I went for a haircut (yeah, I actually had some hair on my head back then
) and wound up sitting in the chair of a young girl that had cut my hair the last time. Her command of the English language was not good but she asked me if I was a dentist. I told her that I was a dental ASSISTANT.
She popped her partial denture out and showed me where the clasps were bent out of shape and could I help her out. I could. And I did. I had her come on to the base the following Sunday. I took her over to the dental trailer and sat her in the chair and adjusted her denture for her. It wasn't made very well and I told her that it was not going to make it very long until it needed adjusting again.
So she wanted to "thank me" so she invited me out to her house for dinner. She lived with her mother and little sister. The house was a small 2-story cozy little house. No furniture in the living room but there was a hole in the middle of the floor with a hibatchi in it. a low table over the hole with a cloth apron around the edges. We sat on mats on the floor around the table with the blanket material over our laps and our feet down in the hibatchi pit (shoes off). It was so cold in the room that you could see your breath when you talked but we were toasty warm sitting around the table.
My friend and her mother and her little sister all got gussied up in traditional dress complete with Obi and hair combs. We had Sashimi noodles, pickles and some kind of crunchy vegetables in a delicious broth. They were gracious enough to pose for me as I burned up 2 rolls of film in my old Cannon AE1 Programmable camera. The camera went belly up and I lost all the pics.
But it was a wonderful meal and a tremendous experience.
After that I felt like I was way behind in the being gracious department. So a week or so later I invited her out for dinner and told her to pick any place she liked. It turned out to be one of my life-time all-time favorite dining experiences. I'll try to do it justice here.
She lived in a small village called Gotemba (also the home of the Bar First Chance) outside the base and we met at her house and took a cab to a small parking lot about 2 miles out of town. We walked about 40 or 50 yard on a trail through some pretty thick woods. We came out on a small clearing with a clear water stream about 30' wide was running over rocks about 5 or 6' deep.
There was a small building just at the waters edge that turned out to be the restaurant. We walked in and were greeted by a young man in white pants and shirt and escorted to a table. My friend and he were talking 90 mph so I just stood there looking around. There were only about 8 or 10 tables and the place was not even half full.
Instead of being seated we were escorted to the back door where we were given fishing rods with small spinning reels on them and each was rigged with a wet fly. A smile began to break out on my face as I realized what the deal was here.
My friend explained to me that we were to fish until we caught the fish we wanted to keep. If you don't like the fist one you catch you release it and fish till you get one to your liking. I had a brief concern that the fish would not bite and what then? This was not a problem. You could look down in the water and see the fish. You could watch the fish hit your fly. I was happy just catching and releasing fish but my friend finally suggested we choose a fish and get on with it.
I think the kind of fish we caught were German Brown Trout. Not sure about that but it's my best guess. Anyway we picked a couple of nice ones and took them back inside the restaurant and gave them to the guy in white. He took them back into the kitchen for preparation. I would say cooking but that would be wrong. We're talkin' sashimi here.
These folks eat pickles and noodles and soup with every meal. The flavors are all very delicate and very delicious. 'Cept some of the pickles will make you bite your tongue. gasp!
The food was served in exquisite style. All the dishes were artfully and tastefully painted and the eye appeal of the table when all the food was set was absolute gorgeous. It looked like a magazine cover. The fish was sliced in bite sized pieces and arranged artfully on small oval shaped plates with small dishes of various colored sauces on the side. My friend explained that some of them may be a little too spicy for my unsophisticated pallet. That was some good information there!
The fish was not cooked thermally but some of the sauces were vinegar or mustard based and kind of "cooked" the fish chemically you might say. It was all very very good.
If you don't like raw fish well I can dig it. I'm not here to try to talk anyone into it if they aren't interested. But I have always believe the old saying, "When in Rome...." I tried it and it went down good. I think it's the texture that gets most folks or the psychological idea of eating raw fish. Anyway a shot or two of sake in advance can be a good thing.
But you know what, I didn't see no broccoli the whole time I was there.
From April of 1963 to May of 1964 ( and before I was reclassified and retrained as a field corpsman) I was a dental technician with the third Marine Division and stationed on Okinawa. These guys decided to do a little foul weather training in January and February of '64 and they chose a great place to test out their skills. The base of Mt. Fuji Japan. The weather there at that time of year is definitely FOUL! The Dentist I was working for and I were "volunteered" to go as part of the medical support for this training exercise.
It has just occurred to me that I did post a thing that happened to me there a few months ago. If you want to do a search and refresh the memory the title of the post was "Adventures At The Bar First Chance.
ANYHOO....If I remember correctly I gave quite a bit of detail on the weather so I'll skip all that this time. The subject for this'n will be a young girl that worked in the barber shop on base. A lot of the locals were employed on base in the PX and Barber shop and hobby shop etc.
One day I went for a haircut (yeah, I actually had some hair on my head back then
) and wound up sitting in the chair of a young girl that had cut my hair the last time. Her command of the English language was not good but she asked me if I was a dentist. I told her that I was a dental ASSISTANT. She popped her partial denture out and showed me where the clasps were bent out of shape and could I help her out. I could. And I did. I had her come on to the base the following Sunday. I took her over to the dental trailer and sat her in the chair and adjusted her denture for her. It wasn't made very well and I told her that it was not going to make it very long until it needed adjusting again.
So she wanted to "thank me" so she invited me out to her house for dinner. She lived with her mother and little sister. The house was a small 2-story cozy little house. No furniture in the living room but there was a hole in the middle of the floor with a hibatchi in it. a low table over the hole with a cloth apron around the edges. We sat on mats on the floor around the table with the blanket material over our laps and our feet down in the hibatchi pit (shoes off). It was so cold in the room that you could see your breath when you talked but we were toasty warm sitting around the table.
My friend and her mother and her little sister all got gussied up in traditional dress complete with Obi and hair combs. We had Sashimi noodles, pickles and some kind of crunchy vegetables in a delicious broth. They were gracious enough to pose for me as I burned up 2 rolls of film in my old Cannon AE1 Programmable camera. The camera went belly up and I lost all the pics.
But it was a wonderful meal and a tremendous experience. After that I felt like I was way behind in the being gracious department. So a week or so later I invited her out for dinner and told her to pick any place she liked. It turned out to be one of my life-time all-time favorite dining experiences. I'll try to do it justice here.
She lived in a small village called Gotemba (also the home of the Bar First Chance) outside the base and we met at her house and took a cab to a small parking lot about 2 miles out of town. We walked about 40 or 50 yard on a trail through some pretty thick woods. We came out on a small clearing with a clear water stream about 30' wide was running over rocks about 5 or 6' deep.
There was a small building just at the waters edge that turned out to be the restaurant. We walked in and were greeted by a young man in white pants and shirt and escorted to a table. My friend and he were talking 90 mph so I just stood there looking around. There were only about 8 or 10 tables and the place was not even half full.
Instead of being seated we were escorted to the back door where we were given fishing rods with small spinning reels on them and each was rigged with a wet fly. A smile began to break out on my face as I realized what the deal was here.
My friend explained to me that we were to fish until we caught the fish we wanted to keep. If you don't like the fist one you catch you release it and fish till you get one to your liking. I had a brief concern that the fish would not bite and what then? This was not a problem. You could look down in the water and see the fish. You could watch the fish hit your fly. I was happy just catching and releasing fish but my friend finally suggested we choose a fish and get on with it.
I think the kind of fish we caught were German Brown Trout. Not sure about that but it's my best guess. Anyway we picked a couple of nice ones and took them back inside the restaurant and gave them to the guy in white. He took them back into the kitchen for preparation. I would say cooking but that would be wrong. We're talkin' sashimi here.
These folks eat pickles and noodles and soup with every meal. The flavors are all very delicate and very delicious. 'Cept some of the pickles will make you bite your tongue. gasp!
The food was served in exquisite style. All the dishes were artfully and tastefully painted and the eye appeal of the table when all the food was set was absolute gorgeous. It looked like a magazine cover. The fish was sliced in bite sized pieces and arranged artfully on small oval shaped plates with small dishes of various colored sauces on the side. My friend explained that some of them may be a little too spicy for my unsophisticated pallet. That was some good information there!
The fish was not cooked thermally but some of the sauces were vinegar or mustard based and kind of "cooked" the fish chemically you might say. It was all very very good.
If you don't like raw fish well I can dig it. I'm not here to try to talk anyone into it if they aren't interested. But I have always believe the old saying, "When in Rome...." I tried it and it went down good. I think it's the texture that gets most folks or the psychological idea of eating raw fish. Anyway a shot or two of sake in advance can be a good thing.
But you know what, I didn't see no broccoli the whole time I was there.
