Australian children just love jelly and after dinner love to dive into a big serving usually topped with ice cream. Australian children are also well-known for being deadly mini-creatures that love sweets especially when it comes to jelly.

To make them extra happy you can use fun shapes and multi layered colours and today as a protest against all the extremely venomous jellyfish that lurk in waters off north-east Australia we are using the shape of a fish with three different flavoured jellies.

The ingredients needed are 3 x 85g original jelly packs in your choice of flavour.

Here’s the method 

• Place 6 fish shaped moulds onto a large tray.
• Make up your choice of jelly to pack instructions and pour evenly into six fish shaped moulds.
• Place in the refrigerator allow to set.
• Once this first layer of jelly is almost set make your next choice of jelly to pack instructions and carefully pour evenly into the six fish shapes onto of the first layer of jelly.
• Repeat this process for the final layer of jelly and allow to set.

 At the end of four hours you’ll have a fish jelly that the children can safely and comfortably dive into.

Dig in.

Hanging out on Internet groups can be incredibly frustrating, for trolls abound everywhere; we’ve all encountered the uneducated idiot who lashes out at everyone and everything to get attention (when they really shouldn’t be skipping those remedial English classes). But the pearl in the oyster is accidentally discovering a band or a film or an artist that you overlooked or may never have found otherwise. Sometimes it’s because they are recommeneded to you. Sometimes they’re one of the fellow listmembers.

I came across The Oohs in such a way, as the listgroup in question was focused upon melodic pop music, from bubblegum to powerpop and beyond. Hooks and harmony required for admission, in other words. And when this band decided to name their first record Ear Candy…well, that’s a gauntlet, isn’t it?

Suffice it to say I was more than pleasantly surprised by the pop foursome, and The Oohs have gone on to release a couple more since then – Saturday Morning Daydream and Llamalamp – in addition to appearances on several tribute and compilation albums.  But I happened to pull this one out tonight, so I thought I’d share my words from the review I wrote many moons ago for Amplifier Magazine:

All four Oohs can handle lead vocals, but when they sing in unison (as they do most often), words like “Jellyfish” and “Queen” and “ELO” immediately jump to mind. But I hear roots much deeper than that in their songwriting. Remember when you looked back on singles from the 1960s and discovered how adroitly they balanced lust and innocence. Check out how the vocals explode along with the subject matter in “Baby’s Going Out Tonight.” Listen to the musical roots all the way back to the Bee Gees‘ “Spicks And Specks,” but the majestic arrangement and signature shifts prove that The Oohs are not going to settle for the easy (retro) way out.

Listen to the vocals s-l-i-d-e together in perfect harmony, the bells chiming in the background, the way the drums seem to carry the song, but then it’s the keyboard…no, wait, it’s the guitar line…as the song fades, you want more and you want it now. And, seconds later, you get what you need as it sweeps back in. “Summer Sun” even borrows the essence of The Four Seasons‘ street-corner savvy to accentuate the pitch-perfect vocals (the acoustic version proves that this is not done with mirrors, by the way). “Head Above Water,” dodging the logical chord progressions for something more inventive, firmly exposes the Rundgren influence the band enjoys, right down to that synth solo (where have you gone, Roger Powell?).

Calling this collection “Sing Along With The Oohs” would not be far from the mark, as you will find yourself doing just that. One more thing about all this name-dropping – the fact that the same band names will jump into your mind is testament to the small number of bands who have been able to pull these arrangements off live. Savor the experience.

The Oohs website.

The Oohs on MySpace

To tell  a secret, I have a deep rooted fear of the ocean. That’s only slightly true, I love the ocean and would spend all of my free time in or near or around it if I were able. Still, it frightens me. Not so much the vastness of it, I would absolutely revel in being able to swim in an area where I couldn’t see dry land, but the threat of what lies beneath. The beasties lurking under the surface are what frighten me. Sure, sharks and barracudas are the stuff of nightmares (thanks a lot Jaws and Finding Nemo) but it’s not even necessarily them that I fear, it’s more the threat of something slightly below the surface that I can’t see and don’t even know that it’s there until it brushes past my leg.

Unfortunately this fear was realized a few years back on my first swim in the Atlantic. It had been a long day of traveling and by the time we got to our resort, it was evening with the sun quickly disappearing. I desperately wanted to get a quick dip in before the light failed. My wife was obliging enough to come with me and we jumped in. I wondered briefly why no one else was in the water, but quickly forgot about my curiosity as I waded out. We tread water for a couple minutes when something brushed past my leg. I’ll spare you the details of what I did at that moment, but I was eternally thankful for the wet environment. My wife must not have noticed the sudden rise in the water temperature, either that or she was too polite to say anything. Regardless, seconds later she felt something, brush her leg.  It was at that point that we were able to see the nebulous shapes floating all around us. We were surrounded by jellyfish.

I’m not sure what species they were, if I had to guess it would sweetmercifuljesuazoa.  I was too panicked at the time to really care, and the other times that we saw them they were in gelatinous blobs clumped up on the shore, making any type of maritime biological study difficult, if not impossible. Brief as it was, it was probably the most horrifying moment I ever had. Luckily, the stings that we received where not severe, or even bad. They were milder than stinging nettles. I can only assume that ammonia contained in my urine, which was expelled during the swim was enough to counteract the poison from the jellyfish. So, you know, hooray for that.

I find jellyfish to be both fascinating and frightening. Because of their simple method of movement and the environment in which they live, they’re incredibly graceful creatures. Their incredible fragility only adds to this. I say fragility because, in the event of an underwater knife fight, I would beat a jellyfish nine out of ten times, however, in terms of normal everyday activities, jellyfish have the upper hand, especially when they’re on their own turf. However, if you are aware of where the jellyfish are, you can easily avoid them. They’re not the swiftest of swimmers, but this brings me to the irukandji. Let me tell you about irukandji.

What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, a stinging machine. It’s really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and sting and make little jellies, and that’s all. Found off the coast of Australia, their tentacles are about a meter long, but the body is only about 5mm wide. There are also stining barbs on the body, so if you manage to avoid all the tentacles, it still has a chance to get you. The problem is that they’re so small, they’re hard to see until you bump into one, like walking into a spider’s web. Luckily, once you bump them, they’re so fragile that they die (it’s actually difficult to study them because if put in an aquarium, they’ll bump into the walls and the trauma will kill them). Unluckily, you still will feel excruciating pain.  The pain doesn’t start right away though. Sure, you feel a little sting from the tentacles, but the way the irukandji works is that the stingers (or nematocytes) only release venom at the tip. Therefore, you feel the initial sting and then the poison gets into your bloodstream and does it’s magic about thirty minutes later. And we’re talking the shit-all horrible kind of magic.

Do you want to know what happens when you get stung by an irunkandji? You get irukandji syndrome. The venom is so potent and horrible that it gets it’s own syndrome attached to it. It can cause severe body pain as well as headaches, nausea, restlessness, sweating, vomiting, high heart rate and blood pressure. They say it also has psychological effects, such as a feeling of impending death, but frankly if I had that list of symptoms, I would probably feel that death was not too far behind, and would probably welcome his sweet, cold embrace. The person who discovered irunkandji syndrome, Hugo Flecker, was a real sweetheart. Since the jellyfish are so small and hard to detect, no one believed that the syndrome was caused by an animal. To prove his theory, Hugo captured one of the irunkandji and proceeded to sting himself, his son and a local lifeguard, thus earning him the coveted BDiU award for fatherly excellence.

Today’s blog is a little earlier than usual, as I shall be enjoying an open bar on a boat from 7pm, and doubt I’ll be in any shape to write upon my return.

I’m rather looking forward to it; the Thames at night is beautiful as it is, but to be sailing along it in a fine suit with free wine in hand… well, ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.

Off the top of my head I’m not sure I’ve ever actually attended a water based soiree. I’ve drunk on ferries (and in typing that experienced an almost overwhelming impulse to do so once more) before, and very possibly on dinghies and yachts, but as far as a specific boat trip for the sole purpose of carousal, well I think this’ll be a first.

I love the Thames. It’s an ancient vein that snakes through the city and the generations alike, connecting us by sight, smell, sound and feel to London-dwellers from a hundred, from five hundred, from a thousand years past. How many have watched this same meander? How many have sailed this same stretch? How many have stood on this spot on this bank and watched the tide flow? I love to walk alongside it, taking in Shakespeare’s Globe, the Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral, The National Theatre and so much more besides; some new, some old, all very much a part of my London experience. The Thames Path at night is my favourite city walk – despite the two year diversion stuck in the middle of it like a knife in a spine thanks to the building work on Blackfriars Station. Even that isn’t so bad. When the tide is out one can choose to ignore the detour and instead go through the rails and down the steps to tread that stretch on the sandy bank itself. I like to pick out the shards of rounded glass, sticks of bone and pottery glyphs that scatter themselves amongst the shells, stones and drift-wood. Treasures of the thames, from who-knows-where and who-knows-when. The potential is endless.

Then of course you have the river itself; the black, merciless waters that seem to stretch, as you stare at them in twilight, beyond the bounds of physics and reality and deep into your very Being. You start to let the waters creep around your thoughts, and can imagine all too readily how easy it would be to throw away the mobile phones and the reality television and just give in to the sharp depths, to the cold embrace of it’s busom.

There are countless lesser rivers, off-shoots of the Thames that weave through the city and it’s borders. Once in our history these bodies of water were worshipped, Gods and spirits named after them as avatars, protectors and personifications of the water; Effra, Falconbrook, Moselle… these names are all but forgotten today; the rivers built upon, ignored, forced to continue their ancient paths underground, or unseen through the waterways and aqueducts we’ve enclosed them in. (if interested, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subterranean_rivers_of_London )

I can’t remember who (perhaps Terry Pratchett? Very possibly), but a writer better than myself once expressed the horror of the sea in a way I can’t. He talked about how on land there are walls, houses, boundaries, countries; there’s distance. Sure, there are terrors and monsters and wild beasts but they’re far away, safe in cages or continents with unpronouncable names. Not so with water. There are creatures we cannot imagine lurking in the darkest liquids of the Earth, mouths full of needles, eyeless bags of blood and gills, and all that seperates us – the ONLY thing that seperates us – is Depth. Not distance, not days of travel, not cars or trains or horses, not castles or houses or mud shacks; depth. Just depth. Think too long on the Lovecraftian possibilities, stare too deep into those dark waters, and anyone with an ounce of imagination could quite readily go insane.

As an example of what’s waiting to be found, scientists have recently discovered (in such depths) the only truly immortal creature on the Earth (as of yet). The Turritopsis Nutricula. A type of jellyfish 3-4 millimetres in diameter that, when it gets as old as is comfortable, simply reverses the process, working it’s way back to a juvenile polyp, before starting again from scratch. Theoretically there’s no reason this cycle cannot continue in perpetuity.

Immortality! And a far more sensible theory of it than simply ageing forever until you’re a form of dust with consciousness, or attempting to stay static and stagnant, growing steadily less and less relevant as the world evolves around your firmly rooted feet. A constant cycle. Growing old, growing young, growing old, growing young… the opportunity to learn from mistakes; to try again; to experience so much anew. A circle of life. Not a strict path with a beginning and an end, but an ouroboros; a snake eating it’s tail; an endless circle. Constantly changing, constantly growing. It’s a beautiful concept, and it isn’t science fiction. It’s here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article5594539.ece

The possibilities of what geneticists could learn from it are mind-boggling and will-puzzling. Just think! Just think.

And so, when I’m supping complementary wine in a double-breasted suit, stuffing myself with hors doeuvres and feeling rather good about the world in a few turns of the clock, I shall lean over the side of the boat and I’ll look down into the waters, into the black depths, and I will do my absolute, very best to stop it from staring back. I will do my absolute, very best to keep from diving in head first, screaming for circles and snakes, and I will do my absolute, very best to swallow my drink, dissever myself from the pull of the ageless Thames, and rejoin the throng. And I will do my absolute, very best to pretend that a significant part of me doesn’t long to go back.

(Video via ITN News)

Monstrous Jellyfish drifting into Japanese waters are reported to be damaging the local fishing industry. Increasing water temperatures are suspected to be the culprit for the influx of oversized invertebrates.

Work is progressing well on my latest game, I Hope to be able to do a blogpost for you all sometime soon.  Until then, here are some sketches from the last few days.

Light Jelly

Agent 57

Contents of my mind

Mask

Also seen here.

20 juni, 2009 @ 2:09 av maloki
We rebuild.eus tog sig an att utreda begreppet Öppenhet. Projektet har hittills gått igenom två sessioner med kaosklusterskrivande. Platformen vi har funnit passar bäst för det är Etherpad. Det blev lite som kaoset på irc, men att istället för en logg så fastnade det “på papper”.
När vi kaosat klart så blev det inlaggt på We rebuild.eus wiki under Disposition öppenhetsbegreppet
>

29 november, 2009 @ 23:06 av maloki
Idag blev arbetet klart. Det har varit en lång och kämpig väg, då vi även har ägnat oss åt mycket annat, bland annat Telekompaketet som har varit en intensiv kamp. Rapporten går att läsa här.
Jag är mycket stolt över arbetet vi har gjort tillsammans. Under en kort period har jag inte känt mig helt hemma i klustret, något har fattats mig, men här kom det. Jag känner att jag har hittat hem igen. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 GOOD JOB EVERYONE, I'M SO FUCKING PROUD OF MY JELLIES! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

I’m re-posting a story originally featured on treehugger: A 10-Ton Japanese Fishing Trawler Sunk By Giant Jellyfish

Here’s the text from the post:

You could say it was the jellyfish, or you could say it was the overzealous fishermen on board. While trying to haul in a catch of several dozen giant Nomura’s jellyfish – one of the largest in the world – a Japanese fishing trawler tipped right over.

According to the Telegraph, “The crew of the fishing boat was thrown into the sea when the vessel capsized, but the three men were rescued by another trawler, according to the Mainichi newspaper. The local Coast Guard office reported that the weather was clear and the sea was calm at the time of the accident.”

It’s no wonder only a few dozen could capsize a boat. Each jellyfish can weigh as much as 450 pounds. This year has seen a big spike in the numbers of these giant jellies, with a similar population boom not occurring since 2005, when the large numbers of jellyfish and their stinging tentacles ruined fishing nets and made catches of fish inedible. Both ideal weather conditions and a smaller number of predators, such as sea turtles and certain fish species have helped the jelly populations grow this year.

Check out the size of these things next to divers:

While they don’t make that great of a meal, fishermen might as well catch what is plentiful and edible – and these certainly fit that bill. In the effort to make something tasty out of the abundant creatures, even high school students are putting their heads into it, making caramel candies out of them…which they’d like to feed to astronauts. Giant jellies invading Japanese water, capsizing boats, and becoming food for space travelers…sound like a teen sci fi book to anyone else?

Even though it might be possible to make something yummy from them, catching them isn’t exactly fun. In 2007, there was a grand total of about 15,500 reports of fishing equipment damaged by the Nomura’s jellyfish. Add a 10-ton trawler to the list of ruined equipment to this year’s reports.

It would have been very hard to predict how this week was to pan out.  Monday saw me bedazzle several persons of some import, with details of what it is I have been up to for the past nine and a bit years.  Tres satisfying I must say.

After what has been almost a year of derision, doubt and another word beginning with d, some folk have had to quickly back track.

Then, later in the week, along with a colleague, I seem to have influenced more persons of import to make a decision that should see work be a whole lot easier in the long run.  It is tricky being so cryptic here, but it wouldn’t take too much for someone to stumble across these ramblings and connect the dots.

I made it to the gym three times this week, which is the best for a while, with all my jaunts out of the office.  I am to be away away again in a week or so at one of our Southern locations as a project needs “executing”.  More of that after the event.

Away from work, I re-discovered the genius of Jellyfish via YouTube.

Jellyfish are genius, trust me.

It really is a travesty that they ony delivered two albums (of absolute class, originality, melody and the finest harmonies known to man) before disbanding.

Please check them out.

Then, this evening I have sinned by starting xmas shopping before the month of December commences.  Things have changed since the girls were younger, as xmas day mornings used to consist of four hours of trying to free the latest doll from the truly ludicrous packaging.  These days, it is electronics, clothes and cash.

The weekend beckons, and this sees us at the mobile shop trying to get the girls onto a mobile tariff that will accomodate their text addiction without breaking the bank.  Then on Sunday, we are off to the Good Food Show at the NEC, so the challenge will be getting the girls out of bed early enough.

Till the next time.

Kingdom of NORWAY

stamp: 5,50 krone

year: 2004

marine life: jellyfish – Periphylla periphylla

Giant jelly fish are taking over parts of the world’s oceans due to overfishing and other human activities, say researchers. Dr Anthony Richardson of CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research and colleagues, report their findings in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Richardson says jellyfish numbers are increasing, particularly in Southeast Asia, the Black Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea. He says the Japanese have a real problem with giant jellyfish that burst through fishing nets.

Richardson and colleagues reviewed literature linking jellyfish blooms with overfishing and eutrophication – high levels of nutrients. Jellyfish are normally kept in check by fish, which eat small jellyfish and compete for jellyfish food such as zooplankton, he says. But, with overfishing, jellyfish numbers are increasing. Jellyfish feed on fish eggs and larvae, further impacting on fish numbers.

To add insult to injury, nitrogen and phosphorous in run-off cause red phytoplankton blooms, which create low-oxygen dead zones where jellyfish survive, but fish can’t.

Richardson and colleagues say climate change may also encourage more jellyfish.

They have postulated for the first time that these conditions can lead to what they call a “jellyfish stable state”, in which jellyfish rule the oceans.

Richardson and colleagues recommend a number of actions in their paper, to coincide with World Oceans Day. They say it’s important to reduce overfishing, especially of small pelagic fish, like sardines, and to reduce run-off. They also say it’s important to control the transport of jellyfish around the world in ballast water and aquariums. Richardson says researchers are experimenting with different ways of controlling jellyfish. Some methods involve sound waves to explode jellyfish, while others use special nets to try and cut them up.

Jellyfish are considered simple jelly-like sea animals, which are related to the microscopic animals that form coral. They generally start their life as a plant-like polyp on the sea bed before budding off into the well-known bell-shaped medusa. Jellyfish have tentacles containing pneumatocyst cells, which act like little harpoons that lodge in prey to sting and kill them.

The location and number of pneumatocysts dictate whether jellyfish are processed for human consumption. While dried jellyfish with soya sauce is a delicacy served in Chinese weddings and banquets, not all kinds of jellyfish can be eaten, says Richardson.

According to Richardson, the species increasing in number aren’t generally eaten.

- from abc

The Muddled Mass of Jelly on the Shore (Part II)
21 September 2009
Ponquogue, Hampton Bays, NY

Jellyfish, originally uploaded by Kelson.

Sea Nettles at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve! Is that even real? Well, I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that you’ll be unbuckling your belts after getting a load of these things from the Internets!

• Best Buy deals from Black Friday?! Yes please! Don’t ever say Kibitzers doesn’t have your financial back
• When the question “If you had super powers, what would they be?” ever comes up, makes sure it’s not one of these
• Had the flu already? You might be protected from H1N1!! HOORAY!!!
• Adam Lambert’s performance at the American Music Awards caused controversy?? No way! Not here in “modern” America!
• All I want for Christmas is you…TO BUY ME A FLYING CAR!
• I don’t think we’re ready for this jelly…..fish
• And finally, either this is the hardest hitting 6 year-old kid in little league football – or it’s a (genius) little person dominating 6 year-olds

And there you have it! If you found a lil’ somethin’ somethin’ that has your interest peaked on the internet, post in the comments below! I hope everybody’s ready for Thanksgiving and the food…oh dear…the food (*drools*). Until tomorrow!

Just a spot of jelly humour. The underneath looks like some aliens that we see on cheap video`s. When seen from the top it could be a new type of UFO. It was pointed out that maybe it was the biggest prick in South Africa burried under the sand. What are your ideas, these are not all mine.

Email:— whitewolf1@live.fr

UFO ? CLICK HERE.

Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Focal Length: 34.0mm
Exposure Time: 0.017s (1/60)
Aperture: f/7.1
ISO: 400

We spent the weekend by the coast and happened upon a beached jellyfish. A good knowledge of marine biology, though useless at the time anyway, would have at least helped us identify this particular species.

I wonder if it is the same as the one photographed by someone else in 2008.

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/jellyfish-split-level-doubilet.html

This trip to the aquarium was so incredible! Watching the fish swim around is very peaceful and relaxing. The patterns and textures on all of the fish were so vibrant and different from one another. The octopus was really strange. It looks like an alien out of a movie, maybe because of the way the body is shaped. At one point the octopus held onto a rock and blew out making the webs between its tentacles blow up like a balloon! Entertainment central!

It was really difficult to get a good shot, but that was sort of the fun of it. If you do go there, expect to be shooting in low lighting conditions, at least in some of the tanks, and work on your panning skills! I really want to go back again at some point. It was well worth the trip!

If you want to see more pictures of the trip to the aquarium, please visit my flickr page.

So, Yuki and I took a few days to visit some of the early temples and castles in the Kansai region of Japan. Most of the structures we saw date back to the 8th century and are truly amazing! Besides the structures there were also tons of great sculptures from the same time period. However, as you all know, this blog isn’t about architecture, it’s about food. This post is to let you know about the incredible Kaiseki we ate our last night in Nara at the Ryokan (traditional Japanese Inn) we stayed at, Yoshino.

Kaiseki is the classic multi-course meal that progresses through various cooking techniques using regional, seasonal ingredients. It’s the highest art form you can find in food anywhere in the world. Focus on the subtleties of each ingredient to draw out natural flavors and not cover then with heavy sauces (sorry Frenchies, but the Japanese have your asses kicked in food culture!).

It started with that dish in the middle of the picture above. From left to right was a little fish grilled in a sweet soy marinade, a roasted chestnut, ama ebi (sweet shrimp), some sort of seafood that had a jellyfish-like texture in a miso sauce (I have absolutely no idea what it was, but it sure tasted good!), then a three-colored fish cake.

After that they brought out this dish. It was obviously a shrimp, but I’m not quite sure what else there was. I think it was a gratin made with the roe of the shrimp. Also on the plate as a macaroni salad and some lettuce with a tomato.

Then we moved on to the sashimi plate. It had some fantastic Chu-Toro (tuna), Tai (snapper), and the star of the plate….Ika (squid). In the States when you order Ika it’s usually very thin and a little rubbery. Not these two slices. They were about a half centimeter thick, squid steaks! Rubbery? Hell no! Each chew and the squid literally melted away in our mouths. Hands down the best squid I’ve ever eaten.

Then they brought us a plate of steamed Ayu (sweet fish). It’s a river fish that eats moss attached to stones giving it a really fresh and clean taste. It was served with a light ginger sauce. The thing that makes Ayu special is that it’s eaten when the belly is full of fish roe. There isn’t much meat, so it’s like dipping chopsticks into a bowl of fresh water caviar.

Being the meatavore that I am, the next plate was what I was most looking forward to….Beef Tataki. Lightly seared beef to give a little texture to the soft raw meat laden with mouth-watering fat. The dipping sauce is a soy-dashi mix. You see the little mound of reddish gew on the side of the dish? That’s a mix of togarahsi (Japanese red pepper) and yuzu (a small citrus fruit). You mix that into the sauce like you would wasabi for sushi, along with thinly sliced chives. With the tataki there was a small dish of sliced cucumber and I think seaweed in a vinegar sauce that cleansed the palette from the fatty beef.

Then we ate the Shabu-shabu. Unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of the individual hotpots we used, but here’s the ingredients. The broth was a light sake base, in it we added cabbage, enoki mushrooms, and shimeji mushrooms. Once they were cooked, we sloshed the thinly sliced beef around to cook it and then dipped it all in a light soy with more of the togarashi yuzu and chives.

After that we got two different preparations of Unagi. To be honest, I have absolutely no clue what the difference was. One was served on top of rice, the other with rice on the side. All I can tell you is that you will never find eel of that quality anywhere in the States. It tasted like they just caught it that morning. Best eel ever! Both came with a little dish of Japanese pickles. They were probably damn good pickles, but I don’t like pickles so I let Yuki eat mine.

After the Unagi was a clear broth soup with an ingredient we couldn’t figure out. At first, we thought it was some sort of mushroom. It wasn’t. Then we thought it might be shiroko, fish sperm sack. It wasn’t that either. We finally found out that it was eel liver, probably from the Unagi we just ate. It had kind of a crunchy yet soft texture. Not something you’ll find on any old menu.

Finally, to finish things off was a plate with fresh persimmons and grapes. persimmons are in season right now and are everywhere while Japanese grapes are absolutely huge compared to what we get.

All in all this was my 5th Kaiseki. I wish I could afford to eat like this every night as there is always something unusual and strange to the western palette. If any of you get to Japan I highly recommend splurging at least once to experience the delicate yet sophisticated Japanese cuisine at it’s finest.