Frogs and Sparrows

If you thought I was going to talk about joys of spring in a pretty park - wrong. I'm talking about dinner.

Once again, we ate with Marcia and Slyvia, this time all the mums in Lena's kindy class took them out to dinner in a Japanese yakitori (chicken kebab) restaurant. While the children ran wild, we had a few drinks, and ordered a huge variety of dishes for Slyvia to try. Typically for Japanese hosts, they were very anxious about getting things she liked, while she simply told them she'd try anything. So I ended up the go-between, assuring them over and over that she meant it when she said she wanted to try anything, and 'Yes, xyz will be fine'.

On the menu were sparrows. Skewered sparrows. It's my fault. The word for sparrow is 'suzume', and the word for dried squid is 'surume'. I said, "Yeah, sure, go ahead and order the (squid)." I got a bit of a fright when the skewers came with two whole plucked birds , complete with tiny blackened skulls and tiny tiny black eye holes. I'm not sure if you were supposed to eat the heads, I certainly did not, and tried at first to restrict myself to the 'meat' before giving up and eating it, bones and all.

After that ordeal, some lightly fried frogs' legs were a breeze! They were really nice, I'd recommend them to anyone. The sparrows, I think, will be a one-off.