My host, Katsuhiko, sincerely told me that this was his favourite food (of all!!!). He asked if I would try it, so of course I ate a piece. I think it was mostly near the foot. It tasted like shoyu flavoured rubber with small rocks embedded in it. As I chewed, (and chewed, and...), I considered the state of my teeth (not good, at the time), and listened for the sound of cracking enamel. Lucky, lucky, not this time! I turned down a second piece. Three days later I told my Japanese teacher, Yanagihara-san, this story, and she told me it was HER favorite food, too! I thought maybe she was pulling my leg.
Katsuhiko meanwhile, or just after my taste test, told me a story of his childhood in Imabari, to whit: he grew up near where he now lives, Oshinden, in the north of Imabari, down by the beach, where many fishermen used to live. I live a few blocks from him, in Oshinden as well. He said in the summer that he would run out of the house in his shorts and bare feet, play baseball all morning at the neighborhood sandlot (he's still baseball mad), then, at lunch time, go swimming off the beach and pluck some of these Sazae off the rocks at about four or five feet down and stuff them in his pockets. Out of the water, he would crack them open and eat them out of the shell with some shoyu brought from home! He'd do this every day all the summer long.
It was worth the tooth risk to hear that.
This is a picture i took of the jetty in Oshinden, as it looked in January 09.
