You know how you go out to a restaurant, order a meal, and then it comes out cooked and all around ready to eat? Funny story.

Ordering off a menu in Japan where we have a tenuous grip on the language  is always a mumble gamble. I see the kanji for chicken…but then what are all those characters after it?

“I’ll have the [murmermurmer] chicken.”

“You mean the chicken [somethingsomething]?

“Yep, that’s the one.”

And then we wait, and then it’s chickenmurmersomethingorother, and it’s delicious. Or, it’s chicken womb.

A great meal swings on the hinge of chance?

In Kyoto last weekend, my finger got stuck in the hinge, and then when I tried to pull it out, my pants ripped, but then it turned out that I was already naked. You know how the old Abraham Lincoln saying goes.

Ang and I were snacking at a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant. One of those classy ones, where there’s no reason for the conveyor belt because everyone is ordering their meals off iPad menus.

There was a giant fish tank behind the sushi chef. The tank had a strong current, and the fish were swimming with purpose, swiftly. It was a nice touch. In Japanese, you’d say the place was moody.

But then a panel opened behind the tank, a net went in, a fish came out, and a chef in the back kitchen was waving a horse mackerel at us (Angie).

Our chef told us, “Oh, you have to try the [mumblescrumble] aji. It’s our specialty.”

“Oh it’s [somethingmumble] aji? Sure, good.”

“Really? Wow. Ok. Grrreat,” the chef said, now slipping into his only English.

Net in, fish out, horse mackerel waved at us (Angie).

The chef in the back disappeared.

“This is where he goes and kills the fish,” I said expertly, stupidly, feeling a little bad that we had sentenced a fish to its death.

The expertly carved sashimi came out with the fish carcass presented on the plate, a macabre garnish we’re used to at this point.

We went in with our chopsticks, and the fish carcass wriggled. Then the fish carcass tried to breath. Then the still-very-much-alive fish didn’t really do much of anything, because it’s pretty hard to move when someone carves off most of you.

Ang let out a little whoop of a nervous giggle, like if Annie Oakley saw someone slip on a banana peel.

I let out a “whooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaarbfl.”

No, I didn’t keep my cool, because I was uncomfortable keeping an animal alive just so it can watch itself being eaten. Yes, I continued to eat the fish, because rule number one of dining etiquette is to not let your meal see itself go to waste.

We ate slowly, just hoping the mackerel would stop moving, but also dreading the moment when it would stop moving.

A waitress came by and said they would fry the skeleton for us when we were done eating. We decided the best we could do by the fish was to put him down quickly. We shoved the sashimi in our mouths and let the waitress take the fish to his deep-fried grave.

Feel free to discuss the ethics of this in the comments. I’m going to watch a video of a chimp washing a cat for the next 30 minutes.

When friends visit, we take them to an Okinawan restaurant in Shibuya. There’s nothing special about the place, but it was one of our first restaurants in Tokyo, so we keep going back. It’s the same reason why one of us still listens to C&C Music Factory.

Some Okinawan restaurants in Tokyo keep it classy with flashing lights and tacky decorations:

We always get a dish made of shrimp and mayonnaise. It’s good. Better than a scoop of mayo, ketchup (?) and shrimp deserves. (Serious face: shrimp farms destroy mangrove forests, so I try not to eat shrimp that often. I’m sure the Big Shrimp lobby is discussing how to deal with my inconsistent boycott.)

Before I moved to Tokyo, I had an unrealistic view of what Japanese people eat. Sushi…edamame…uh…other kinds of sushi. I had an image that everyone in Japan was extremely healthy, and that once I got here, I would become this sleek, Vitamin-D-glowing guy that smelled vaguely of freshly cut grass.

But now that I’m here, I use my own money willingly to purchase sausage/sauerkraut/mustard-flavored Doritos. Or Anchovy & Garlic Pretzel Bites. As it turns out I have an awful habit of seeking out odd-looking junk food and then being shocked when it tastes exactly as expected. And based on some of the smells emitting from guys on crowded trains, I’m not the only one.

Tokyo residents DO look healthy. But I don’t think it has anything to do with an all-fish-and-vegetable diet. I have friends here who hate sushi and vegetables and put mayonnaise on their pizza. Try to say with a straight face: “I’m a responsible person making sensible decisions and I’m putting mayonnaise on my pizza.”

Perhaps it comes down to portion control. My first few weeks in Japan I felt hungry all the time, but I wasn’t skipping any meals. It just turned out that when I bought lunch or went out to dinner with friends, the portions were smaller than what I was used to in the U.S. But it didn’t take very long to get accustomed to it, and when we visited the U.S. last year, I was that annoying person at restaurants saying, “Wow, I can’t believe how much food they serve here. There’s no way I can finish this,” (there was a way, and I did).

So take hope, world. Japanese people are just as willing to eat junk. They just stop a few bites earlier. Also, they have this weighing on their souls: