Viking Style & strange pizza

So two interesting things happened today.

One was I learned a new Japanese idiom - Viking Style.

I'll give you a minute to think what this might refer to.

Hint - It has something to do with eating...

I'll use it in a sentence: My 8th graders were treated today to a school lunch that was served "Viking Stlye."

So basically it means "buffet" stlye or even "a la carte" if you will.

Instead of each student being given identical trays of school lunch, which is the normal way, some of the parents set up large tables with a variety of foods and the kids could go down the line and pick whatever they wanted to eat.

The Japanese call this eating "Viing Style." My JTE asked me if I wanted to go see what the 8th graders were having for Viking lunch today - I paused, asked him to repeat, and then after I confirmed that he said the word Viking ("You know, like pirates." "Yes, I know what a Viking is.") he explained to me what the hell he was talking about. Apparnetly the Vikings would just grab whatever they wanted to eat and start chowing down, so the Japanese have labeled eating with no set plan "Viking Style." Makes perfect sense now. But you know I'm gonna be using that idiom every chance I get.

Another thing happened at dinner. Emily (Happy Bday Em!) drove into town for dinner and she stated a prefernce to eat something Non-Asian, perhaps something that you could eat without chopsticks. I empathize with her on this one - there's just so much rice you can eat before you need something that reminds you on home. So off we went to Izumo, where we met up with English Mark (The Don) and Lifer Dustin (Lifer cuz he's on his 5th year as a JET). We all strolled down the street from their apartment building to a local Italian restaurant. The menu offered up some interesting variants on pasta, including squid ink spaghetti and teriyaki chicken pizza. Dustin decided to go for the teriyaki chicken pizza, but when it came out the chef had drizzled mayonnaise all over the pizza as a decrative garnish. MAYO - on pizza??!! Come on folks! So Dustin didn't want to eat his, so he had some of mine, which wasn't bad. I had ordered the "Spicy Sausage" pizza, and it was OK - but not really pizza either as it didn't have any tomato sauce on it. And we had salad with really tasty dressing - the first time I've had a regualr salad since coming here - so that was cool. Emily was game enough to try some of Dustin's rejected pizza and said it wasn't horrible. Mark had some seafood pasta and he ordered some fried octopus as a starter. But when the octopus came, they were little miniature octopi - deep fried. You just had to see them. Mark proclaimed them "oishii" which means "tasty," but I'll have to take his word on that. Dustin took a picture with his camera phone, so hopefully I'll be able to post the pic of the Octopi Appetizer.

I learn something new everyday I live here, and today was a double treat. I'm either easily amused or I like my life or both.

-Jason
who craves good Mexican food something terrible