Basashi: just say no

Departing from daily life events and my semi-regular bitching about the Japanese education system, here's a post you've all been waiting for, something to churn your stomach, curl your toes, and set your teeth to grinding. See, when one goes to a foreign country, especially a super-freaking-weirder-than-the-far-side-of-Jupiter country like Japan, one always has to wonder - what mysterious new "delicacies" will I encounter, and will they cause me severe gag reflex/intestinal difficulty? This post is dedicated to all of the culinary treasures the Japanese consume that Americans (and in fact much of the Western world) refer to in the vernacular as fucked the fuck up.

Caveat: I know the Japanese eat raw fish, and I fully support this. With a few exceptions, I consider myself pretty tolerant of foreign culinary delights. I have my quirks, but I'm not a picky eater.

Natto

This one's kind of a no-brainer, but for those of you who haven't had the distinct...pleasure...of experiencing this dish, I'll explain. Natto is a gooey, chunky paste made from the fermentation (read: decay) of soybeans. It is often served with (over) rice, or rolled up in a sushi roll. Somehow it manages to not only smell like sewage, but to also have a stringy, slimy, and gritty texture, all at the same time. I read not too long ago that it's actually quite healthy. If by this they mean that your gag reflex will get a Herculean workout, they surely weren't kidding.

Kawa

Kawa means a shell or a skin, and when consuming most birds the Japanese tend to leave the skin on and eat it with the meat. This may not strike one as abnormal at first; most of us have had KFC or a rotisseried bird that was cooked with the skin on. The Japanese seem to leave the skin on everything, though, so it'll be maliciously clinging to perfectly innocent chucks of chicken found in one's soup, or - this particularly revolted me - to a breaded, fried piece of meat like a chicken nugget. Imagine the shock and horror at biting into one of these tasty little morsels only to discover a layer of soft, blubbery insulation in between your mouth and meaty victory. *shudder*

Yakiniku

On that topic, the Japanese have what most Westerners would call a very confused approach to beef. Meat rich in fat is treasured above all others, and is priced notably higher at the supermarket. Yakiniku is simply the term for strips of meat cooked over an open grill.
Now mind you, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, so long as you buy/choose your own meat. Beef with a nearly fillet mignon-esque crimson color to it is often half the price (or less) of a plate of slices veined through and through with nasty white stuff.

Chawan mushi

When I first encountered this dish several years ago, I honestly thought it was a joke - I thought my host father had designed this recipe simply to laugh at the sight of me recoiling in horror. See, I don't care for certain nuts, I don't like large quantities of egg, and I couldn't be paid to consume mushrooms. Guess what it contains.
Chawan mushi is an egg custard (stress on the 'egg' part; it's not even remotely sweet) in which bits of mushroom and various nuts are suspended. I know my host family at the time was aware of the three foods I dislike, so we still laugh over it today when we talk - such was the coincidence that a dish containing all three of them existed.

Tentacles

These really don't disgust me so much as they make me laugh, but they do send some people running for the hills. If it belongs to the class of mollusca cephalopoda, the Japanese have probably tried to eat it. Every time I go to the supermarket, I can't hang around the seafood section for long without suppressing a giggle - it's a big freaking tentacle on a plate!
These also lurk in the most unsuspecting of places (such as spaghetti), bringing one to wonder exactly where the next of these Cthulhian beasts will spring from, eager to extract your soul through your nose...

Horumon

While not quite the most obscene culinary masterpiece I have encountered yet, horumon certainly ranks up there. It's pretty popular around this area of Akita, so I was inevitably offered some on one of a number of outings with the locals. I had never encountered it before and lacked a dictionary to reference the term, so one of the gents who had joined me for this meal tried to describe it to me, simply at first... He said it was pig meat, and it looked innocent enough. I bit into it, though, and my teeth sprung away from it's rubbery this-is-not-meat-as-we-know-it texture in a futile attempt at warning me what a foolish mistake I was making. No, I pressed on, determined to force down at least a single piece before inquiring for further details. Chewing it to the point where it was actually broken into swallowable bits was impossible, but I washed it down with a mighty swig of beer, and gave my dining companion a quizzical look. "What part of a pig is this, exactly?" I asked.
Y'all can probably see this coming, considering how much I've talked it up at this point...this answer, of course, was large intestine. Mind you, I have no problem with eating tongue, liver, etc...but somehow consuming the last thing pig poo sees before it greets the world again struck me as very, very wrong.

Basashi

And finally we reach the title piece, the resplendent crown of this post. The word basashi is composed of two characters, 馬 and 刺. The first one means horse, and the world would truly be a better place if it simply ended there. Alas, the gods are cruel, capricious beings who delight in the wanton suffering of mankind, and they chose for that second character to add the meaning of uncooked. Yes, they not only consume the flesh of horses here, but they eat it raw. I've only had one opportunity to try to explain to a Japanese person why this is not OK, but it just didn't strike them as such.
To add a cherry to the top of this already blasphemous sundae, they even have basashi-flavored ice cream. I shit you not.