Misaki is one of the two famous fresh-tuna ports of Japan, along with Oma in the north. But today we were here for other reasons. You had arranged a schedule that included lunch, some sightseeing, and now a trip to the Misaki fish center. Here, I’m pondering what made us come here, and why his whole family was tittering so much behind their hands.
Let me digress a moment to say that, as far as country town fish markets go, this one is cool. Cool in a ‘wackiness index’ sense, because there are few places that you can get fresh maguro (happily cut into small saku so it’s not prohibitively expensive), big frozen cuts, and also a whole freezer full of tuna eyeballs. What the hell do you do with tuna eyeballs?
How about tuna intestines? How about tuna eggs?
I soon realized that the reason they were tittering was that they were about to make me try this once-in-a-lifetime delicacy. The sign says “The only place in the world!”…
Tuna gelato.
In fact: tuna, seaweed, another seaweed, and salt ice cream are all on the menu. Along with green tea, strawberry, vanilla and ‘mangou’, for the less adventurous.
Or maybe just for the more sensible, because the hijiki ice cream had little flavor, and none of said flavor was hijiki, while the tuna ice cream was just icy, bland milk-flavored ice cream with flakes of tuna mixed in.
The You’s kept looking at me like I was going to throw up, and saying I didn’t have to eat it, but as usual I’ll be damned if I buy food and don’t eat it. There’s a really high bar of badness to clear before that happens.
As usual, we clowned around a bit too. You’s a good guy and a good friend. It’s sort of too bad he doesn’t know about the blog.
