Day 3 – First Night off Post

I’m bummed out that I missed the morning tours and “field trips” out to town.  I also didn’t get to participate in any cultural exchange visits with a local family.  The problem is that our unit is under staffed and the elements of the division that would normally be responsible for coordinating and finding out what’s going on are not here.  Thus, we are lagging behind on the cultural events. 

 So, I took it upon myself to schedule a night out on the town.  We decided to go outside of our base.  We didn’t take an interpreter with us so we decided to go out to one of the local restaurants near our post. 

Five brave souls went out on a quick adventure.  I was looking forward to Sushi.  My boss, who went out with us wanted Kobe beef.  Others in the group just wanted something different that they didn’t have at home.  We couldn’t differentiate restaurants from shops or business offices.  Go figure, everything here is in Japanese.  We decided to just go walking and let our noses determine what a “restaurant” was.  This idea seemed to be well accepted by the group and we proceeded to walked for about 30 minutes.  We didn’t walk in a straight line, we actually appeared to randomly turn left, then right, go forward a few more steps and the turn right, etc.  The delicious smells from around were getting stronger and most of us were just plain starving! 

Finally, we saw what looked like a restaurant and we stepped in.   The restaurant was small on the inside and had booths with sliding, see through doors.  The tables were about a foot off the floor and we sat on benches.  We had to remove our shoes and then fold ourselves into the tables.  I think this is pretty traditional.  The menu was in Japanese but at least it had pictures!  We guessed at what some items were and if they sounded appealing we ordered them.  The best way to describe the style of food we had here is “tapas.”  When our meal arrived, the servings looked like appetizers.   We all shared each other’s dishes and discovered that most of what we had guessed was wrong.  For example, we thought a picture that looked like chicken nuggets was something completely different.  The size and appearance the “chicken nuggets” were like KFC chicken poppers.  When we put some on our plate and ate them, we discovered rather quickly that it wasn’t chicken.  In fact, I would describe the items as “knuckles.”  Yup, knuckles … Cartilage.  Deep fried knuckles. 

We finished our meal, paid our check and then headed for the base.  Oddly enough, we made it back to the base without getting lost.  I guess it helps if you have an android phone with GPS.  My BB had a signal but I’m not on an international data plan.