Let's eat "Shabu Shabu"!

This week was busy with 3 work dinners. I'm finally at the point where it's nice to try new things, and doesn't everyone love a free meal?!

This meal was in honor of a Mitsui trainee from the Singapore office. He was here for 4 days, and we took him out for a fancy dinner the final night. I am told that "shabu shabu" is a very costly meal, so I should be happy that work was paying for all drinks and food.

First we start off with "fugu sashimi", which is the nearly clear triangles of stuff on the outer edge. As the name suggests, it is raw fish. But it is a very special, rare, and expensive raw fish. It comes from a poisonous puffer fish and is prepared only by special chefs who can slice it paper thin and remove all but a tiny portion of poison. If prepared improperly, the person could die. People say you can feel your tongue go numb a little bit from the poison. I actually ate all of it. Once I doused it with lime, dipped it in soy sauce with radish, and jammed a green onion in my mouth, I could barely taste that it was raw fish.

There was another appetizer that I didn't take a picture of but it was really yummy fried fish nuggets. The only catch was that there were still bones hiding inside, so you either had to crunch really hard and swallow the bones or find them in your mouth and spit them out.

On to the main course! Shabu shabu is thin slices of beef (top) and pork (bottom) which get boiled in hot water and then dipped in your choice of sauces. Morisaki shows us how excited he is to eat the raw meat!

Beef goes in first because it cooks much faster, in about 30 seconds.

When it's brown, you know it's done. Beef is generally dipped in soy sauce or sesame sauce, and pork is generally dipped in miso soup. You just start grabbing whatever meat looks cooked with your chopsticks and jam it in your mouth.

We had about 10 dishes of raw meat brought to our table of 4. This was a pretty good meal, but I think I'd rather fry the pork up and eat it like bacon!

At some point you have to skim the fat floating around the surface of the water. (BTW - I taught everyone a new English word today "skimmer".)

There are also vegetables to add to the boiling water, but Higashi (our main shabu shabu cooker at the table) gave us strict instructions to fill up on meat first and then vegetables later.

Between this and the "nabe" pot, I'm wondering why Japanese like to go to restaurants and cook their own food at the table. It seems like so much work. Higashi was always busy adding more meat, skimming fat, making us eat the cooked meat before it got too chewy...

We were also served Nagoya-speciality noodles, which are thin and flat (kind of like fettuccine), and in a clear soup.

At last dessert came. I look like I've had a few too many nights of drinking in this picture, but I wanted to demonstrate the small portion we received. It was a bite-sized brownie, a spoonful of ice cream, and a half of a strawberry. Thank goodness that Shiraishi said "drinking and dessert don't mix", and gave his portion to me, too!

I also learned that I have a Japanese condition called "betsu bara", which literally means "separate stomach". It applies to anyone who is full from dinner, but can still eat dessert because they are said to have a separate stomach for that. Yup, sounds about right!! I'm going to remember that one!