Day 7: Turning Japanese

Greetings from the land of the rising sun! So yesterday was an interesting day in the ol Quest for Thunderlips program. I managed to get in a run before I flew to Japan and I had a healthy turkey sandwich with fruit at the airport. On the flight I had two airline meals, and several glasses of wine whilst standing around talking to the guys I'm traveling with, but seriously, what are you gonna do? I don't go to Japan every day so I figure what the hell right?

Last night I was treated to teppanyaki here in Nagoya and overall I think it was fairly healthy in terms of eating out. The volume of food was too much, but I don't give a flying rat's ass, you've gotta enjoy when its time to enjoy. In addition to beers and much Saki, the meal consisted of:

Buckwheat pancake with fresh veggies and peppers from Okinawa with some sort of spam substance and and a fried egg that the chef took great care in preparing. It was freaking incredible. Next, they put this little pot thing right on the grill and prepared me pork belly with Chinese veggies and shark fin. I ate all of it but the fattiest part of the pork belly. It was pretty good stuff but insanely rich. After the pork belly doohickie, things got interesting. The chef brought out live abalone that was squirming wildly in their shells. The chef got the abalone open and ready to go and let us watch it squirm while he got the other stuff done (one of the guys hosting me told me that soldiers like the abalone...it looks like a woman's lady parts and it squirms. Had to be there but it was funny). While the abalone was squirming and trying to escape or screw each other or whatever it was they were doing, he put small grates on the grill and then put five square blocks of salt about the size of a large man's wallet on top of the grates. After the salt blocks heat up, the chef put the squirming abalone still in its shell on top of the salt blocks and then covered it with this copper dome thing for a couple of min. Then he put a bunch of spices and capers and stuff on the abalone (still squirming) and then laid this giant seaweed piece across all five abalone salt block combos and covered again for about ten min. After the ten min, the chef uncovered the whole thing (abalone are now dead), took the seaweed, capers, and spices off the abalone, cut them out of their shells and prepared them on the grill. After they were mostly cooked, the chef cut the abalone, put them back in their shells, and served them to us. I've gotta say it was pretty freaking fantastic. After that, a full fillet Mignon. After the steak, miso soup, salad, fried rice and fresh veggies. OK, so I probably had about 38,000 calories last night. Like I said, I don't care, it was awesome and I'll probably do it again tonight! YEEEEEEHAWWWW!

For my breakfast this am, I had a great buffet. I opted away from all the American choices (except one small slice o'bacon) and went with a pretty healthy Japanese offering. Check it out below....

I know this was the most boring entry ever, but hey, what else is there to say, I'd rather play with all the gadgets in my hotel room than do blog entries. No workout today, it's my day of.

Later!