The Sausage of My Despondency

Japan has some screwed up convenience store food. The most starkly horrifying of these are the strange snack-breads, which despite containing corn, mayo, and/or meat products, require no refrigeration whatsoever. Suspiciously cheap, and apparently impervious to spoiling, these things scare the crap out of me. Let's look at two case studies.


1. The Pork Sausage Roll
A lengthy pork wiener slathered in mustard and ketchup on a white bread bun. It can kick around inside your backpack for several of July's hottest days, and still remain edible. Yoiks!



2. The Pork Dumpling Roll
Looks like an innocent sesame roll, but open it up and whoa! There's some kind of greasy, meaty patty in there. Like the Pork Sausage Roll, it requires no refrigeration.

Are these things irradiated, or simply loaded with more preservatives than Lenin’s corpse? Either way, they are a sin against God and all that’s holy and natural.

10/15/2005: I forgot the punchline, which should have read "...but I still can't seem to stop eating the fuckers."

Coffee with that?

Man, urban Japan is awash in SEX, and odd little semi-seedy, semi-respectable streets litter this fine nation. Adjacent to a building housing a fetish underwear shop on the first floor and strip clubs on the second, you find a definitely non-fetish shoe shop run by a saintly white haired granny. In the dead center of a residential area, crammed with immaculate vinyl-sided homes and stucco apartments, a hard-core porn shop might open, right between the neighborhood 7-11 and the barber where mom gets her hair permed.

It was in a neighborhood such as this that I found the Starbox Image Club. It appears to be some sort of cosplay strip-joint, though I was not willing to risk my marriage by going in and confirming this. I’m not sure which aspect of the logo I liked best -the brazen co-optation of one of America’s flagship brands of hegemony, the double meaning of the word ‘box’, or the likelihood that the proprietor was oblivious to this double meaning.

Smack my konnyaku up

Greetings, and welcome to the first installment of Yamatonokuni. This blog shall attempt to thrust a small, unwelcome flashlight into the inadequately lubricated orifices of a major Japanese population center for the enlightenment, amusement, and hopefully unmasked terror, of any audience it accrues. Today we turn our attentions to an area of Japanese culture sadly neglected by many Western scholars: food sex.

Konnyaku (above photo shows a typical example) is a rubbery Japanese staple made from the starch of an exceptionally unaesthetic potato called devil’s tongue or sometimes Konjac. This almost entirely flavorless food has a history of over 2000 years, contains zero carbs, few calories, and has the highest molecular weight of any fiber known to science. But what is the point of developing a highly refined starch-based food product if you can’t screw it?

Case study:
According to my informant, ‘Mr. A’, any block of konnyaku jelly of sufficient size can be swiftly adapted for nefarious purposes. Mr. A kindly divulged the preferred technique of konnyaku-based gratification.

WARNING: (as of yet) UNTESTED BY AUTHOR. AUTHOR TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR BURNS, DEATH, GENITAL INJURY OR RIDICULE RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THESE INSTRUCTIONS.

Ingredients:
1 block konnyaku*
1 small dried sardine**
hot water

Directions:
1. Use a paring knife or other suitable instrument to make a hole of appropriate size in center of konnyaku block. Do not to pierce konnyaku all the way through.
2. Drop konnyaku block into hot water.
3. Heat 1~2 minutes, until konnyaku is precisely human body temperature (98.6 F or 37.0 C –use a candy or meat thermometer to ascertain temperature).
DO NOT OVERHEAT KONNYAKU. RISK OF INJURY, INFERTILITY, HILARITY.
4. Use disposable chopstick, etc. to insert sardine into the bottom of hole made in step 1.
5. Lubricate to taste and utilize.***

*Prior measurement to assure block is of adequate size and thickness strongly recommended.

**Interestingly, according to Mr. A the dried sardine is for the purpose of adding a realistic “barrier”, and not for, ah... olfactory stimulation (as one might initially assume).

***Post-coital disposal is another matter altogether. We may note here that konnykau is a popular filler for many kinds of soups, stewed vegetable dishes and stir-fry in Japan.

09/28/05 Clarification: Man, I completely forgot to specify...this particular means of recreation is meant solely for MALE users. Sorry to all those confused lady readers who wrote in ("...OK, I've made a hole and stuffed the sardine down there. Now what? The thing seems too squarish to be of any use..." etc.) I do apologize and shall do more research into whatever the female equivalent of "Konnyakubation" may entail.