Me and viscera, perfect together

I don't think an American can travel or live in Asia without being asked by friends and family back home: What's the strangest thing you've eaten?

Because they've rarely even left their home state, they live vicariously through us globe-trotters and excitedly expect us to answer that we've feasted on bosintang (dog soup) in Korea or sustained ourselves on aborted fetuses in China, so we're a little embarrassed when we confess we've gotten as far as tripe on a stick from a street vendor in Hong Kong -- and we spit it out after the first bite.

I admit that I'm not an adventurous eater. I eat food because I'm not ready to die, and I eat food that I suspect will taste good to me. Like most people, I have a psychological block on certain foods due to texture, appearance or smell, and I'm okay with knowing I could be missing out on the tastiest snow-leopard-penis dish ever.

And if you'd explained to a sober me ahead of time what shiokara is, I never would have agreed to eat it, so thank Asahi Breweries for giving me the one "What's the strangest thing you've eaten?" story in my Asian travels.

The last time I visited Tokyo, my husband's co-workers took us to an izakaya in Ikebukuru, the kind of place you'd never find unless a regular took you there. We entered through the sliding wooden door into a tiny, dimly lit dining area that seated maybe 20 people at tables and a long bar.

Our Japanese hosts ordered for us and not long after sitting down, the beer started to flow, and as it had been a sweltering June day, I was knocking back the Asahi and Koga-san ensured my glass stayed full.

By the time our first dishes of edamame, pork belly and octopus sashimi arrived, I had a buzz. By the time the chicken hearts, various vegetable skewers and shiokara arrived, I was so drunk that I'd started to remember the Japanese I'd learned in college and wasn't ashamed to use it.

At the time, I'd never heard of shiokara and I wouldn't know what it was until well after I'd eaten almost the entire dish myself. Our hosts had ordered it as a joke, since none of them liked it and they'd hoped we'd be sufficiently disgusted by it, but I didn't realize they weren't laughing at my attempts to speak Japanese but at my inhaling something that's an acquired taste for even the Japanese palate.

"So, you... like shiokara?" Koga-san asked.

"Koga-san, I love shiokara," I answered.

After going back to the hotel and sobering up, I went online to see what the hell shiokara is, and as I read about it, I could feel the bile of horrified vomit rise in the back of my throat.

Shiokara, you see, can be summed up as "fermented squid with guts." The raw viscera of the squid (and occasionally other marine animals) are mixed with about 10% salt and 30% malted rice, packed in a closed container, and fermented for up to a month.

And while I'm thankful I now have an answer to the above question, the now-in-place psychological block means I won't be trying shiokara again.