I ate raw shrimp

Last night was the End-of-Year Party for my department at a traditional Japanese restaurant.  It was also a welcome party for those of us who were new to the department in the last few months.  It was my first traditional Japanese meal, complete with many interesting dishes.

Here is a picture of Maiko, Tanya and I happily full at the end of the meal.

This is what my place looked like when I arrived.  The small little salad thing was made of seaweed, squid, fish eggs and okra.  It was very slimy, but also a little spicy.  Actually, now that I think about it, this dish has been the only spicy Japanese food I've had since I got here.

 The next dish was an assortment of sashimi, including salmon, tuna, scallops, shrimp, and a white fish (halibut?).  This was my first time ever eating raw shrimp.  At sushi restaurants in the U.S., shrimp is always served cooked.  I'm not sure why, because it was pretty tasty raw.  Sort of creamy and sweet.

I didn't eat the head or tail.

After sashimi, we had a soup that included crab legs, clams, fish of some kind, meatballs, tofu, leeks, mushrooms and bok choi.  It was delicious.  We heated it ourselves at the table using a portable gas stove.

Maiko served everybody using a small ladle into tiny little bowls.  Most of us had seconds.

Here is my bowl with only the crab leg and tofu piece left.  Don't worry- I ate them next!

I missed photographing a little fish dish with a mayonnaise sauce, but don't worry, it was my least favorite anyway.
Next came a very strange decorative dish of cooked salmon with some sort of sauce, covered by an oyster mushroom, served on a big leaf.  The yellow thing is a seed from a ginko tree (it had no flavor, but was pretty to look at). The pink and white thing was a pickle young ginger shoot.  It was extremely tasty.  But mushrooms and ginger are two of my favorite foods...

The second to last dish I ate was the most familiar tasting of all the dishes to my American pallet.  Think of something like potato gratin, but with crab meat instead of potato pieces.  This was put inside a crab shell, then deep fried.  It was great, although admittedly greasy.

 There was one more dish I didn't photograph.  It was basically like sushi (individual servings of fish on rice) but the fish was cooked.  I was too full at that point to partake, so I don't know what it tasted like.

Finally, we ended with dessert.  This is a sponge cake with some sort of yellow cream on the inside.  The sponge cake was matcha (green tea) flavored.  It was excellent.  I'm never too full for dessert!

And that, plus two beers, was my first traditional Japanese meal.

Very tasty.

That's all for now

-Bre