Wild Boar

I have not turned down many meals in Japan. In fact, I think I can honestly say I have eaten more than my fair share of the vast majority of the food placed in front of me.

I have proven an ability to eat all sorts of crazy stuff like natto (fermented soy beans that the kids frenziedly stir with their chopsticks until it resembles regurgitated snot [yes, that's what I meant]), fish with eggs still in the tummy, a plethora of vegetables I don't know the names of, not because I don't eat veggies but because these are harvested from some dark crevice or recess unknown to the Western world, trees (seriously; these people will eat anything), and an assortment of animals in various stages of preparation and mammals in a variety of forms.. You know that school lunch when they tell you "oh, it's many different kinds of fish"? You're eating whale. They consider it a fish.

Even after living here for over a year, I shock my friends and colleagues by explaining that yes, I do eat raw fish (sashimi) and I know what wasabi is, even though i incorrectly pronounce it as wasabi. In general, I just try to be polite and grown-up - unless I think something will make me physically ill, I eat it.

Take wild boar.

Last night, my office had a practice end-of-year party for those of us who would be at alternative end of year parties. We ate stew made from a boar my boss trapped outside his house. (How's that for locally farmed?)

Normally, this would host no problem. Except they put the hide in the stew. Which made it taste like hair.

What's more, I don't know if you've ever tried to de-hair a wild boar, but it ain't like plucking the down from a baby duck. Those follicles stay put. So the hair was still in the meat as well.

Now, I tried to be reasonable. Most everybody was eating the whole thing, so I gave it a shot.

Then I gave it up. It was the singularly most unappetizing meal I have had in the last ten years. And I include my own cooking in this (which is why I mostly eat raw fish).

Later I realized the hide had most of the fat and had floated to the top of the stew. So after a few servings, what remained was the richer meat from closer to the bone. It looked delicious, but the broth still tasted like hide and hair. That was a no go for me.

To make things better, later in the evening as more people drank, they left the hide alone. Only a few old codgers (and one young wife) ate the parts that got stuck in my gullet (and my teeth).

Japanese food is delicious. But let's leave the local farmers to what they're best at.

Rice.