Octopuses are weird! Octopuses are creepy! The way they look. The way they move, slithering about frantically with those tentacles going in every direction, yet so frighteningly coordinated they promise to wrap up your head or face or limbs with slimy ropes, covered with suction cups ready to attach themselves in a slimy sucking unbreakable grip, then god knows what!
For some reason just hearing them mentioned, I used to immediately visualize giant octopuses enveloping ships and submarines, crushing them and drowning everyone aboard. I know that was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Captain Nemo in a life-or-death struggle not with an octopus, but a giant squid. Whatever! Big ugly sea creature. Tentacles. Bad attitude. It’s all the same to me.
Understandably . . .
For at least six decades of my life, I never once thought about eating an octopus, or any part of one. I put them right in there with rats, earthworms, cockroaches, garden slugs, slime mold, the beating heart of another human, in the I’d-rather-starve-to-death folder.
But something completely unexpected then happened. I’m not sure of the exact date but it was sometime in 2008. What I do know for sure is that I tried octopus and loved it! Masumi took me to the 道頓堀 district in Osaka — literally octopus central here in the Land of the Rising Sun — famous for takoyaki [蛸焼] and other octopus treats. It was the early days of our dating, so I was completely taken with her and all she was teaching me about Japan, the cuisine and the culture. Next thing I know I was eating the weird, creepy creature, and I WAS HOOKED.
Years later, I had some friends visit Masumi and I from America, I was preparing dinner, and just as a courtesy I thought I should ask: “Are you guys okay with me putting octopus on your salad?” I’ll never forget their look! They did their best to hide it, but it was somewhere between or a combination of horror, disbelief, revulsion, and fight-or-flight. I was amused. Because I did and still do remember my initial reactions when somehow confronted with the prospect.
How things change!
I can honestly say that octopus is among my Top 20 favorite Japanese edibles. It’s comfortably in my Top 50 all-time favorite foods from across the entire globe, which includes such diverse items as T-bone steak, cookie dough ice cream, pizza, BLT and grilled cheese sandwiches, hot fudge sundaes, French onion soup, cheese enchiladas, licorice, seaweed and sea salt potato chips, butter pecan ice cream and coca-cola floats, bacon-avocado cheeseburgers, yellowtail sashimi, Korean barbecue, Chinese hot-and-sour soup . . . you get the idea.
Traveling the world and living full-time in a country as different from America as Japan surely is, has taught me to be very open-minded. Still . . . don’t ask me to eat fried grasshoppers or the beating heart of another human being. I have to draw the line somewhere.
