Go West to find the Orient

Vancouver, the edge of Western civilization, the Alexandria Eschate of the Occident; it's so West that it's virtually East! Going around town one immediately feels the aggressive yet seductive flirt of the Orient on the city. With an Asian population that seems unparalleled in the West, Vancouver is booming; glass high-rises and sushi are the local fetiches here and everyone is happy with it.

At lunchtime today, while our crowd was heading for turkey sandwiches and salads one asks me "do you like sushi?"

"Um, I'm not sure; I haven't really tried" explaining that my sole two experiences with it comprise of one dirt-cheap Athens fast-food place -a purely nauseating ordeal- and homemade sushi night at Geist... vegetarian. As if hardwired to a central command server everyone simultaneously turns right; "sushi!"

After discussing the selection of sushi bars on campus (!) we arrive at a very authentic looking venue (not that I would actually know authentic); aesthetically very Asian without any of the kitsch extremities that curse European Asian dining. The place was packed, too!

Tempura, sashimi, nigiri, gyoza... needless to say I was ordered for. The first dish I got, the overture that was supposed to ease me into Japanese dining, was fish, raw. Now, I know that that's what sushi is all about, but this was raw fish, only raw fish; three unadulterated slabs of tuna and salmon. No greens. No rice. No kidding.

What followed were assortments of colorful and masterfully intertwined bundles of larger-than-bite-sized sushi. I did relatively well I think; I may even end up craving it with a little conditioning; once I overcome the mushy consistency of freeze-thaw softened fish flesh, the taste is good!

What I found to be a greater than expected obstacle was the seemingly disproportional size of my oral cavity compared to the sushi lumps. Everyone else was gulping them down in one go. I, on the other hand, had to use them chopsticks in weird ways, avoiding eye-contact with the others while doing so. First attempt; stuff the whole thing in the mouth using one chopstick to hold the main mass in place while using the other to scavenge the things still dangling out. I'm sure this looked disgusting...

For the sake of those eating around me I decided to go to the next obvious alternative; bring them down to size. The catch here being that the only utensils available were again, the chopsticks. So first you stab the bundle making a piercing with the chopstick. Then you take the other chopstick on the outside and try to squish the thing apart, at which point you will undoubtedly end up with the seaweed absolutely refusing to give in. Having isolated the strip of seaweed between your two chopsticks, you proceed to rub them together, the seaweed in between, counting on the friction to break it apart. Let me tell you, this can take a while and if you're in a sushi bar in Vancouver, you're going to get dirty looks from everyone in proximity which you will feel on you regardless of how concentrated you will be on the task at hand.