Don't know the word for squishy

I can't find the word for it yet, but I don't think slimy "nurunuru" is the one I'm looking for.

I'm climbing back into the whole going-to-Japan thing, and not, IMHO, a moment too soon.  I've tentatively set a date -- 5 September 2014 -- to go back.  In the meantime I've started retackling the language, and with a vengeance.  It's in my head all the time.

In that respect, you may, if you're one of my few regular readers, recall something I referred to in a previous  post as an "Octopop."  It's a baby octopus on a stick.  I looked at it at the time, there in the Nishiki Market in Kyoto, with a big old fish-eye.

Get it?

Too octopus-like for me.

The main concern I had about eating one of those things was what I get when I bite into the head.  I like the thought of eating octopus, it's one of my favorite sushi dishes.  I think it's the texture, which is very firm (I once heard it described as "jaw wrestling").  No, it's not the idea of eating octopus that I mind, far from it.  It's the idea of eating whatever is in the head that I couldn't sign on for.  After years of seeing Star Trek aliens with big heads I kept imagining these little buggers filled with just a massive brain.  I'm just not at octopus brains yet.  Or at least not, you know, raw.  Give me time.

But then recently I went back to a web site for the Nishiki Market, where I saw these delicacies, and read that they're filled with quail eggs.  Well, that's not so bad. Especially if they're hard-boiled.  And at only 200 yen apiece, it's a steal.

So, I went up to our local market, which sells a sort of ex-frozen sushi, and bought some squid salad and, yeah, baby octopus.  That's two things, the squid salad and the baby octopus.  The squid salad I'd already had and, aside from being a trifle too sweet, it was pretty good.  So, I figured, what the heck, buy the octopus.

Octopops at the Nishiki market.  With quail eggs inside.

The nice woman at the counter was not, I'm pretty sure, born in the Southern United States, or really any place within four or five thousand miles of it, and English was certainly not her first language.  Now, I've gotten pretty brave as a rule at trying out my Japanese with people I don't know, but here in my small town every time I've tried it with someone who appears to have a chance of understanding it, I've felt a fool when the person turns out to be from a country that's close to Japan, but not, you know, close enough actually to speak the language.  So, I just asked her in English if the octopus were stuffed with quail eggs.  Well, that went right by her.  It's ok really.  I don't know the word for "quail" anyway, though I'm great with "egg," which is the same in Japanese as "eggs" of course.  It's 卵, pronounced "tamago."  Anyway, to her credit, the lady at the counter had "thank you" down real nice.

So as I said, I bought two of the squid salad and one of the Octopus and went back to work and devoured the squid and then, like an 8-year-old looking at the swimming pool with cold water in it, and knowing I was going to do it sooner or later, I dived right in to the octopus.

Here they are, in a nice neat Japanese orderly way.

I have to say, they are a little too sweet for me.  They have been prepared with some sort of sweet syrupy thing that does not, to my mind, enhance the idea that you're putting a baby anything whole into your mouth and chewing.  It really ought to be pickled or something to go with what's going on. They're squishy and, to be fair, someone who called them "nurunuru" wouldn't be far off the mark.  So, ok, syrupy and slimy.  Also, if you'll compare the ones I had for lunch today with the ones at the Nishiki Market, mine didn't look as -- I don' know -- perky as the ones in the market.  Mine looked, well, dead, and those other ones looked like they were all having fun at a little baby octopus playground.

On octopus playground, with egg

Anyway, this may be my last time for doing the baby octopus thing until I get to Japan, where I hope they will have the same delightful texture and a more satisfactory, that is to say, less slimy-sweet, flavor.

By the way -- inside the head of the ones I had today: no brains, no quail eggs, no memories of a previous life.  It was just, well, empty space.  Someone apparently has the job they'd wanted since early childhood: scooping out baby octopus heads.