Try Natto

I dipped the object lightly in the plastic saucer of soy sauce and wasabi set in front of me. The natto roll. Even soy-sauced, it still gleamed greyly up from my chopsticks, as if taunting me with its funky fermented smell. Eat me. Eat meeeee!!! Eww.

Shining in the restaurant light, somehow the roll’s small baptism in sauce did not seem like quite enough… So I dumped my whole saucer on top of the beige-looking bean-stuff, threw the entire natto roll in my mouth, and swallowed it as fast as possible.

It had… a slick, greasy texture. An unmistakable flavor, like something really strange and old in my throat. What the hell was that??

But, with liberal amounts of salty soy and spicy wasabi, natto was… not bad.

I tried natto when I was in Tokyo last year. It’s really sticky and it tastes like what it is: fermented beans. I had it a few times, and actually I can say it kind of grew on me. It’s tasty with rice and mustard, and I saw some people stirring in some raw egg, but I didn’t do that since I don’t eat raw eggs…