My first encounter with kani miso was accidental. It was during my first weeks in Japan, when I would buy things in the grocery store just because they were labeled in hiragana—the Japanese alphabet I could read—instead of kanji, the thousands of complicated Chinese-based characters of which I knew approximately thirty. So when I saw the word kani, crab, I thought I was buying a container of fried crab meat, and it wasn’t until halfway through dinner that I began to detect the muddiness of the flavor, a certain bottom-of-the-sea taste I remembered from an hour-long seafood feast I had eaten in Thailand, encompassing every type of crustacean and mollusk I had ever heard of, and culminating with a plate of prawns swiftly beheaded by the hostess of the meal, the thin green brain fluid pooling on the serving plate, a sight which had ended the meal for me. Looking down at the fried thing in my chopsticks now, I noticed the grayness underneath the batter. What was I eating? I finished the remaining pieces, but vowed to stick with the kare age, fried chicken, next time.
Sitting at the local kaitenzushi (conveyor-belt sushi) restaurant a few weeks later, I watched the approach of a roll stuffed half with crab meat, half with a dollop of some mysterious substance the color of wet cement, with the thick and shiny texture of mayonnaise. (A condiment not out of place at kaitenzushi restaurants, incidentally—hamburger steak and a squirt of mayo balanced atop a small finger of rice, anyone? …Anyone?)
“What is that?” I asked, as my friend James grabbed the plate and added it to the growing pile in front of him.
“Kani miso.”
“But what is it?”
“Crab guts. Want one?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to look like a wimp. “Okay.”
As he plopped one of the two rolls on my plate, he told me about the first time he had eaten crab guts; it had been at this very kaitenzushi place, on a night when he came alone and sat at the counter, next to an old man presiding over a giant pile of empty plates. I imagined a rainy night, possibly with lightening, and the old man as wizened and dirt-streaked, most likely with a blind, rolling, cataract-ridden eye.
“I reached out to take some kind of clam sushi and I saw he was watching me,” James said. I thought of the darting cataract eye. “So I asked him if the one I picked was any good. He said no”—I could see his cackling, wrinkled face—“but the one he was eating was. So the next time it came around, I tried it. And I liked it.” A flash of lightening! The claw-like hands, curling triumphantly around their disposable chopsticks! A flayed and defeated crab lying supine in the kitchen behind the conveyor belt!
There was still the matter of the kani miso on my plate, and the dawning realization that I had eaten fried crab guts for dinner once.
I picked it up with my chopsticks, the guts glossy in the fluorescent glow of the conveyor belt. I dipped it in my small dish of soy sauce. I ate it. There was the dense crab meat, then the squish of guts between my teeth, the bottom-of-the-sea taste, but even stronger this time, as I chewed through the rice and seaweed wrapping. It tasted like crab, but dirty crab. Like a dirty martini—something dusky and thick beneath the clean sweetness.
“Huh,” I said. There was no flash of lightening. “It’s okay.”
But the next time I went out for kaitenzushi I found myself picking it out of the conveyor-belt line-up, enjoying the disgusted look flickering behind the eyes of those at the table who would never try crab guts, their open-mouthed incredulousness as I popped the pink and gray pieces into my mouth and chewed. “Mmm…” I said, hamming it up in the face of their revulsion, and it actually did taste better than the first time I had eaten it.
And after that, I started eating kani miso for myself.
dawn approaches, but i still need my delicious coma!!!