horse, of course.

Seeing Mike after 2 years was quite a delight. No real news there. He was happy to see us, and boy were we happy to see him. I was kind of nervous for jet lag, but had no idea how hard it was about to kick my ass. The time difference from Toronto to Japan is 13 hour difference. And after my plan of sleeping the majority of the plane ride was crushed, I just had to ride on the stimulation to keep me awake.

After arriving at the airport, we got on a bus to a train station. Not only do I not remember the station name, I probably couldn't pronounce it anyways. The trek back to his place was about 2 hours, and I was already nodding off. There was no resting. We immediately juiced up some train passes and hit the town. We met up with some of Mike's plas who had been living in Japan for quite some time. He took us to a couple of cool spots where we got to try some very unique dishes. In Japan, they don't fuck around or start off easy. The first dish we had was fried octopus. The spongey and chewy texture had me a little uneasy, but it wasn't anything that I couldn't handle. It was the next place that threw me for a real loop.

We get to this little two level hole in the wall. The first thing that I noticed, the shoes come off. How traditional, right? We walked upstairs in our colored and mismatched socks only to find a table set into the ground and cushions to sit on. I'm thinking, "This is fucking fantastic!" At this point, I have to ask Mike to ask our waitress for everything. Bathroom, water, english menu, booze. He has become my little translator. And Japan isn't nearly as overwhelming when you have a translator.

Anyhow,  Mike excuses me to the bathroom. And from behind a door that looks like a shelf, I find myself in the toilet area of the establishment. Now, I don't know if anyone has ever heard anything about Japanese toilets, but they are fucking confusing. First of all, the toilet seats are heated. Very nice little surprise as I sit down. After I do my thing, I reach for the "flusher." Oddly enough there is no flusher. Just a series of buttons with Japanese symbols, each with several settings of their own. Perplexed, I attempt to press every single button on the toilet. Nothing. After 5 minutes of button pressing, I still can't get the damn thing to flush. Although I did figure out how to give my rear end a soothing rinse and how to turn up the temperature up on the heated seat. Giving up,  I leave the bathroom. By this time, the line was now around 3 people people deep. I quickly ran to my cushion on the floor making sure not to make eye contact with the next soul who dared to use the bathroom after me.

After I had put that whole fiasco behind me, the plates of food started piling onto our table. If you've never eaten horse before, don't do so in copious amounts for the first time. I consumed raw, seared, cooked, and fried horse. Apparently, horse is one of the top 5 Japanese foods! What I SHOULD have done, was eaten a piece of each and been on my merry way. Instead, I indulged in the culture. hard. It also put me into the worst food coma I have ever experienced. It was like the jet lag and horse were eah pulling on my eyelids, forcing me to sleep. Packing my stomach with an entire horse only came back to haunt me in the end. I ended up passing out for 15 hours that night. I woke up with the biggest gut rot I have ever experienced. Not only was my body hating me,  but I had just slept for 15 hours straight. Jet lag was certainly a bitch. But what better bitch to bring me half way across the country to eat horse and sit on an extremely warm toilet seat.