sashimi - and an attempt at using proper punctuation

About a week or two ago, after university I had planned that I would go watch “Borat” the movie, or that longer broken English title. I had however finished early, about 5pm so I had about 4 hours to kill.

Having started a new system for training - mainly making sure I go for a 1 hour walk each day - I decided on proceeding to Paceville, where the cinema is, and walking around the coast there for half an hour, and then walk back, thus filling my 1 hour quota for the day.

This I did after contemplating on what to do in these 4 hours, for half an hour in my car. In that half an hour some prospective parkers stopped to ask me if I was leaving, and I signalled no. After that I booked tickets for the others at the cinema, set my Nokia countdown timer, which also serves as a mobile phone, for half an hour and proceeded, along the coast.

When I completed my hour I passed by this new-ish Sicilian pizzeria in Paceville and realised that hey, since I m not often in town I couldn’t give up the opportunity for their pizza and since I had walked for an hour I deserved some self-gratification. Their pizza deserves a blog post for its own, see “Sizzlers’ pizza or maybe Al Rifugio’s pizza but I m not too sure” (coming soon).

After that I proceded to my car parked neatly in its spot with another car behind it which I knew was parked infront of a garage or something. Around the car lurked a shadowy individual who I knew was hoping to park somewhere suitable. I sat down inside hoping to kill the remaining hour or so by reading a book, when suddenly the shadowy guy approached my window and asked me if I m leaving the spot. I turned around and I said “No, I m sittin…” and there I realised that I knew the person and that I hadn’t seen him in a while.

His name’s Andre he had taken the same scholarship I had taken for Japan (and this is where sashimi comes in), and had been there the year before I was. He told me about how he was looking for a parking spot before going to work and how he couldn’t drive around much since his car seemed to have overheated. Seeing how he was pressed for time I offered to drive off and find another spot elsewhere since I had time to kill anyway. He was pleased, so pleased he infact insisted that I go to the restaurant he worked in, the Zen Japanese restaurant at Portomaso, where he said he could give me some free sushi or soemthing. This seemed like an awkward situation and seeing how I had just devoured a pizza, I refused saying I had just eaten and that it would be a bit strange getting in there and stuff. He however, insisted on offering me some green tea at least so I complied, found a new parking spot and walked on down to the restaurant.

Basically the place, especially the sushi bar looked like I stepped back in one of the polished wood sushi bars, in one of the secluded urban areas of Hirakata-Shi, except this had a distinct air of posh.

I sat down. Andre introduced me briefly to the head waiter and brought me my promised cup of cha. The place is truly beautiful, and promises great on food, at least from what I saw on other people’s plates at the bar. The sushi looked exquisite. The place offers the whole getup with Japanese chefs preparing a variety of dishes in clear view by those at the bar, with more seating area at the back where a teppanyaki grill is set up with its own chef playing away with his knives, ingredients and occasional pyrotechnic stunts.

Before I left I asked my friend the waiter to get me a green tea ice cream as I had not tasted one in over 3 years now and couldn’t leave the place without it. To tell the truth I had tasted better but it was very ok, except that when you have not tasted something in a while and want to taste it again you expect it to be as good as the best specimen you have sampled. I better not bitch though as it was an adequate green tea ice cream; cold and matcha tasting. I left the place and went to see “Borat”.

And where’s the sashimi I hear you all say. Well this encounter decisively awakened my desire for raw fish. That is what sashimi is, raw fish. Back in Japan at first I didn’t like sushi and sashimi too much, especially since before I learned how to properly tell the Japanese waiters were to shove the wasabi in half fluent Japanese, I would occasionally get sushi or sashimi with the fucking coagulated demon snot inside. However when I learned that the weird repulsive taste in the sushi was coming from that most horrid of supposed edibles I ordered without, and consequently learned to love sushi, and particularly realised I preferred the raw-cutlets-of-varied-fish-on-a-plate they call sashimi, the most.

“Borat” was great, except for the part where after the intermission everybody was munching away at their newly bought cinema junk food and there on the screen we experienced one of the most nauseating yet ingenious scenes ever, a homo-erotic wrestle-fight between two males, a skinny one and a fat-ass hairy one. It was ironic how the cinema-hall was filled with fresh (usually beautiful) smell of hot nacho cheese sauce.

Next day I went to the newly opened Hugo’s franchise on campus and bought a take away Lm 3 sushi bento box. They were all good except the very last one I ate which stood next to a cone of that most horrid of green pulps and thus infused it with its hate and shit taste.

That day I went home and luckily my mother was going to cook her usual steamed salmon steaks, which I like but, couldn’t help resisting eating a fresh one. After making sure that it wasn’t defrosted and was rather fresh I washed one steak in clean water and ate the motherfucker raw as Mother Nature intended.