Out With Arri San

Things have been looking up since we got past new years, I’ve totally got over my cold, the shops have opened up, Scott came back on the 5th and I've been out a few times.

Went out with Arri san the other day, if you remember he's the guy from the 7/11 we stop at every day on the way to work to get breakfast and things for dinner, lunch for any Americans out there. Just going to digress for a minute I was brought up with the three meals of the day being breakfast dinner and tea in that order try telling that to any one from the states, breakfast lunch and dinner to those guys.

Anyway back on track, like I say went out with Arri san, actually he came over to pick me up and took me to his home town which is a place called Ujiei so he could have a drink and not have to worry about driving later on I’d catch the train back to Utsunomiya later.

Arri or Harry, sounds like that to me anyway is a pretty good fun guy seems like an old guy but probably not a lot older than me when I think about it.

First place was one of the local Izakaya which is basically a Japanese pub that serves food, this one was just a small hole in the wall type place, the kind I like. Japans just like anywhere you can get real ponsey and expensive places and the whole range in between, this was probably bottom end but nice.

First on the list was Sake and beer, I let Arri san do the ordering, no photos or anything here. When he asked me if I liked fish the only thing I told him was that I did not like bones.
After the drinks the first thing that arrived was two great big fish head cleaved in two, apparently the meat from the cheeks and the head is pretty good and prized, and not cheap, and the eye balls are a delicacy. So in for a penny in for a pound give it a go I’m English after all. Actually is wasn’t that bad and managed to miss the bones did not go for the eye balls though, Arri says they pop in the mouth, just left it to him do think it bothered him.

After that some Yakitori, that’s chicken on a stick actually a bamboo skewer to you or me, much more to my liking, not that the fish head was bad mind you. Actually Yakitori I think is meant to be just chicken, Yaki is grilled and Tori is chicken in Japanese, but now in Japan Yakitori are made with pretty much anything pork beef or chicken, sometimes that are vegetable on the skewer as well.

Our Yakitori were chicken with sort of leek type onion things and very nice to, needless to say they did not last long.

All the wile we were drinking Sake, in the winter it’s pretty common to drink warm Sake, got to say it was nice and well warm. Actually there are literally hundreds of Sakes probably as may as that are whiskeys in Scotland, got a bit of a lesson on it from Arri san who is a bit of a connoisseur but have for got it all now. Just to say there are lots of different Sakes and they all taste different so I’m told, potato, rice, sweet potato, barley etc.

Time for the next course, raw oysters and big ones at that, well I may be a bit uncultured but I’ve had oysters before and to be honest I don’t see what the fuss is about just a bit lump of slime sliding down your throat. Can’t let the side down though and Arri was watching me and to be honest they don’t bother me but like I say don’t really taste of anything, apart from the lime juice or soy you put on them. Bit like snails if it wasn’t for garlic butter who would eat them, unless you were dying of hunger of course?

Anyway down the hatch with the oysters, luckily there were only two each so it was a doodle so to speak so we got these polished off finished the beer and Sake paid the bill and it was on to the next place. As Arrie called it a snack bar, which over in Japan refers to a bar with girls and karaoke I think, well I’ve herd him refer to these type of bars as snack bars before.

So were off a cross the road to the local snack bar, it had a karaoke and girls or should I say old lady’s, I mean I was the youngest in there and that's saying something. There seemed to be some guys in there with there wives and girlfriend singing and just generally socialising and as usual everyone was very nice.