Halloween & flying flesh...

Halloween is a purely gaijin event in Japan. While waiting to meet up with A. in Shibuya, there were quite a few drunk gaijins dressed for the occasion. Little did we know that A. was going to be one of them...

We decided that if he was going to live through the evening, we would need to get some food into him quick. On A.'s drunken insistence, we went into what we thought was an izakaya. It turned out to be a yakiniku establishment instead, i.e., a place where you order raw meat and they bring a grill to your table. The grill is put in the middle of the table and everyone gets the joy of cooking their own meat. I guess the Western equivalent would be that fondue craze that hit in the late 80s...

A.--who was still in his Halloween costume--went into a drunken, broken Japanese ramble with the poor waiter about the types of meat that he wished to have, while I apologized to him as best I could and ordered some kind of caramel dessert.

When the flesh arrived, A. started cooking with his chopsticks--instead of the metal tongs provided--while telling rambling, drunken stories. Let it be known that they provide metal tongs for a reason. It seems that meat tends to stick to the metal mesh of the grill and you just can't get a good enough grip with chopsticks... Either that or they realized A.'s state and provided the tongs out of the kindness of their hearts. He was ignoring my comments to this effect, saying that it would taste better with chopsticks.

While telling a story, he tried to flip the meat with his chopsticks. He grabbed a corner and pulled at it. The meat didn't move. He pulled harder. The meat didn't move. Finally he yanked it. The meat went flying off the grill, hit B. in the forehead and landed on her lap. B. sat there for a second with a dazed look on her face and a black wet spot on her forehead. A. looked down at his chopsticks and then began frantically looking around the grill, the table and the floor for his lost meat. B. started laughing hysterically and pointing to the meat that was still on her lap. When A. finally realized what had happened, he got rather upset. "That [piece of meat] was almost finished and was going to be perfect!"

It was at this point that the only vegetarian at the table grabbed the tongs and started cooking. It was only a matter of time before I got hit with the flying meat, and I daresay I wouldn't have taken it as well as B. had.