クジラ！！！

(Kujira)

So a week or so ago, Daniel said one of his students (his favorite) wanted to take him out to dinner and was told to ask me if I wanted to come along as well, so he (the student) could bring his girlfriend. I delightfully agreed to a dinner of KUJIRA. Which, you might better know as WHALE. I hope this post doesn't gross you out or nag at your morals, but I think this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so you'll have to forgive me.

This past Tuesday, we met up with Ikeda Yasuaki and his girlfriend, Rie, in Shibuya, and walked to this restaurant, appropriately named "Kujira-ya" (basically, "Whale House")


The interior is beautiful and so fancy, so we knew we were in for quite a treat. We got our own little private room that seats six people and got situated. Yasuaki showed us the menu and pointed to this set that he was thinking of getting. It included a bunch of courses of whale prepared different ways, so we all just decided to go for it. They also ordered a glass of beer for all of us to accompany the whale. Conversation was all in English because the two of them want to master English, as they said. But it was good; we talked about earthquakes, girls with suitcases and eye patches, Chinese, driving and traffic, past whale experience, sketchy business conducted in Shibuya, work, and the like. They are both C.P.As (!); she just started working at IBM (!!) mainly working with taxes, and he is in private business.

First came this:

Whale tail, boiled, and mixed with cod eggs.

The texture was rather like bible tripe or something; I didn't think it had much taste besides a bit spicy aftertaste, but it wasn't bad.

Whale tongue, but of course!

This tasted exactly how you might imagine whale would taste...I found it much too chewy for my liking, and it had an oily texture, and just felt blubbery or something. But I mean, again, it wasn't bad; the two were surprised that we weren't grossed out yet I think.

Ah, can you guess? Sashimi!

Definitely one of the best dishes, though apparently Japanese people don't often eat whale as sashimi, it's more often boiled or cooked some other way. The white part is the skin and the deep red is the meat. Really, a bit surprisingly I suppose, delicious. Just tasted like really really fresh sashimi.

Kara-age, which normally is fried chicken, but here it's fried whale of course.

Also quite tasty. I love me some fried foods, so I enjoyed this too. It was crispy which made the meat a bit tougher, but still it really doesn't taste like you're eating something out of the ordinary. I think Rie really enjoyed this one too.

Yaki-niku!

And veggies too!

We cooked it at our table.

This was amazing! The marinade, or however they prepared it, was so delicious. And the vegetables were good too. Again, didn't taste like anything out of the ordinary. It wasn't blubbery, oily, or tough, just meaty and yummy...

We wore adult bibs! To prevent the yakiniku cooking to get all over us.

The last main whale dish was rice that we poured a broth into, with whale flakes on top

Just tasted like ground beef or something mixed with rice. It was a nice and warm palate-cleansing dish. Then we had a nice citrus-y ice cream along with tea to end the meal.

So all-in-all, a really amazing experience. This particular dinner set is priced at 5000yen; each drink we had was over 600yen (total of 2)...And Yasuaki paid for it all.......very kindly and generously. They even took us to parts of Shibuya that we've never really ventured to (near the highway and where all the skyscrapers and nice-looking places are). They took us to a bar in the end to continue conversation...music, learning languages, traveling etc...and paid for everything there as well. Then we ended the night and all went home. So worth missing 3 hours of intense and sweaty dance practice for....