My first sushi memory
I was sitting at a long table in the lunch room of my elementary school. A lot of kids had lunch boxes like me but there was a girl who brought bentos (a Japanese lunch) instead. We did live in Japan. That wasn’t really odd. I probably tasted sushi before that. I must have been 7 or 8 years old at the time. I didn’t like sushi.
This girl, though, would open up her bento with a loud ooh and aah at every bite. That day she got overly extatic about a sushi roll her mom put into the bento. She said, “I bet you won’t eat this bite of sushi.” And I wouldn’t have until she made it a matter of honor and pride. That was the age when I ate a live spider because some boy in my sunday school class dared me. (which, by the way…live spiders taste a little hairy and a little light crunchy) In other words, no matter what my taste buds told me, I was going to love that sushi.
So I ate it. And loved it. Actually I realized that nothing tasted bad when it was a matter of pride. Thus was the beginning of my gradual love affair with sushi. And, as with many love affairs, what starts as a light attraction can end in a lot of heat which is what I do to my sushi now. Drabble the seaweed, the crunchy and raw things with a lot of wasabe and fish sauce. But it all started, this affair, as a dare in my elementary school in Okinawan, Japan.
aud'acious 