The Jones' Korean Adventure

Every Wednesday, we get taken out for lunch by our director's wife. It's our weekly "meeting", meaning that we talk about classes and students for about 5 minutes, and spend the rest of the time eating delicious Korean foods and chatting about non-school related things.

Today we had sushi! Now, I've known for awhile that this Wednesday's lunch was going to be of the raw variety, and I have to say that I woke up this morning with a sense of dread. I've never had sushi before, and being a real "weird textures gross me out" person, the thought of it has always, quite frankly, turned my stomach.

1:00 rolled around, and we were summoned to the elevator to begin our descent to the 2nd floor sushi joint. Initial impression of the restaurant: cute decor (low tables, sliding doors, etc.) and a delicious fried smell. We sat down at our table and our waitress almost immediatly brought in the first course. Everybody got three pieces of sushi, and one little fried-batter covered ball (still not sure what was in it). The sushi looked like little balls of rice with wasabi sauce on it, covered by a long strip of raw flesh. There was one pink one, and two white ones for each.

Trying to appear brave and confident, I picked up my chopsticks, grabbed my pink piece and tossed it in my mouth. Not bad...different texture, but not the strong fishy taste I was expecting. I swallowed, smiled, and then moved on to piece number two. Piece number two didn't go down so well: chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew. No progress. Chew, chew, chew, chew, chew. My thoughts: "If I swallow this now, I will choke and die. If I keep chewing this piece I could potentially vomit all over the table". Chew, chew, chew, chew, chew. By this time, our director's wife was starting to notice that I wasn't talking, and that I was just continuously chewing with a blank expression (blank because I was trying to win my own mental battle with the fish). That's when the laughing started. Everybody at the table thought it was pretty funny that I COULD NOT, for the life of me, get that piece of sushi down. Five minutes later, I managed to choke the still-rubbery-as-all-get-out piece down my throat. Victory!

I thought that was the end of the raw sushi, until the doors slid open, and our waitress brought in what appeared to be large plates of noodles. Then, I again noticed the white flesh on top of the noodles. "Oh well", I thought, "at least there are noodles with it". Wrong. Apparently you DON'T eat the noodles...they're just for decoration, and when you've finished your plate of raw fish, and only raw fish, they take the noodles back, wash them, and use them for the next visitor. I felt extreme disappointment as my body broke out into a "I don't know if I can do this" sweat. Again, I managed to work my way through my 5 pieces of rawness.

The doors once again opened, our noodles were cleared away, and many more dishes were placed on our table. We were each given a bowl of rice with what appeared to be seasoning and a bunch of salt on top. I started to mix mine together, and then heard Sam say, "Are these fish eggs on top of the rice?". Of course they were fish eggs, but why couldn't it have been salt? Or, why couldn't I have found out it was fish eggs AFTER I had eaten it. Yes, I still ate it, and was only weirded out once, when I bit an egg straight on and it popped in my mouth.

I bet you want to know if I'd ever go out for sushi again, right? I'd probably go...if I wasn't paying for it, and if I could stay miles away from the chewy white piece.