The Dinner Guest

Hey Everyone! The weather is really getting nice here. It is still cold and we are having occasional snow flurries but it is definitely getting warmer! The sun is shining and the rice fields are being fertilized for planting! Also this time of year, as Gabe mentioned in the previous post, there are a lot of office parties. This past week one of Gabe's co-workers retired and we had a small farewell dinner with some other teachers. It was at a really nice restaurant famous for sushi. We had some great dishes, like sashimi, tempura and hoya (sea pineapple). Hoya is rare even in Japan. In fact it is special to the area that we live. When fresh it is delicious. The food was served in courses. As we finished one dish another was brought in. Here is a picture of one of the final dishes served!
It looks scary but was actually delicious. It was a salt grilled fish, half a head and small piece of the body. I watched the others eat most of the head, including the eye! I didn't eat too much of the head, but I was pretty proud of myself for at least picking around it! I will spare you all the photo that Gabe took after he ate off of his head...I'll just say this, it looked like a flesh eating bug had taken over a very angry looking fish! Here are some pics of us instead, inside the restaurant.