Eyeball

私とマグロの目玉

Today, ate an eyeball the size of my dad’s fist.

When my grandma showed it to me at the super market, she expected me to freak out like she did. That would be the normal reaction since this is what it looked like:

Instead of fear or disgust, I was excited. I knew I wanted to eat that thing as soon as I saw it. My grandma was horrified at my response. The only thing she could say about it was “GROTESQUE!” about three hundred fifty times. It took at least 10 minutes for me to convince her to buy it for me. I begged, quite vocally and with a lot of gestures, in front of an entire supermarket of Japanese people. I will eat the entire thing. I’m not afraid of anything. Once in a lifetime opportunity. Just PLEASE.

Nothing would convince her until I said, “I want to do it for my brothers.”

It’s true. If Survivor Man could impress them by eating scorpions and maggots, I was sure I could with an eyeball of this enormity.

With great suffering and complaining and saying the word “grotesque,” my grandma let me put it in the cart, then later in the pan. By this time, it wasn’t entirely against her will. She wanted to see if I could actually do what I promised. After some time of cooking, she brought out the beast. This is when the fear and disgust kicked in. I spent a good 5 minutes just looking at it. Planning on where I should start and imagining the tastes. Despite the difficulty of starting, I ate it up with the assistance of excessive ginger, wasabi, soy sauce, rice, and the image of my brothers reacting the way they would if they could see their older sister eating an eyeball that looked like this:

Giant Tuna Eyeball

Before it was cooked:

I bought Maguro no medama. A huge eyeball.

350 Yen:

マグロの目玉 ¥350