I’m from Australia, where the Japanese dining landscape is mostly dried seabeds of sushi and tempura bound by rivers of teriyaki sauce.
Tsuru tsuru tororoPhoto: Audrey Foo Tororo, grated mountain yam, with rice.
Saku saku inagoInago no tsukudani are locusts boiled in soy sauce and salt or sugar.
Leggy, beady-eyed insects are visually startling but I tried some saku saku (delicate, crispy) treats in Tsumago-juku in Nagano Prefecture that were inago (grasshoppers) fried in soy sauce and sugar—and they went down surprisingly well.
What if I said it’s seminal fluid?”“No!”Don’t eat shirako to be “Japanese.” Only one out of the seven locals I asked said they like it.