entry nº 38 // 20181127

shoko and i, we were out there taking a little walk along the beach by our house on day, mid-afternoon-ish, warm, the sun still firmly stationed up high enough in the sky to stave off thoughts of the day ending, for the time being, at least, and then, holy shit wtf is THAT?! it’s a, jesus, it’s a whole goddamned SQUID sitting there? and pretty freaking sizeable, too, parked perfectly in the sand, lightly lapped at by the waves. of course, you see something like that, you go get a better look, right? we made our way up, and man, that thing was cool. we wondered if it was still alive, at first – it was so perfectly preserved there, no visible damage or anything other than a bit of a gash on its flank, but it didn’t seem to be responsive or anything. one or the other of us eventually got up the nerve to prod it a bit, and lo and behold you could still see the patches of color in its skin glitching around in response to our touch. shoko decided to text our neighbors to see if anyone was around who wanted to come check it out, and from Irie-san (an older carpenter friend living up the street from us, who has become sort of a de facto neighborhood patriarch, not least because of his role in organizing the imajuku showing for this year’s indiaka tournament, which, more about that some other time) came an almost-instantaneous response that he’d be right there. turns out he was actually not at home but a little ways away in his truck, but he hustled home, and after keeping our squid find staked out against various interested onlookers for a short while, we saw snowy-haired Irie-san come running down the beach towards us. we, still a bit reserved w/r/t touching the squid, worried that, what, it was going to spring up and suck us both down to the bottom of the ocean?!, watched in awe as Irie-san grabbed that thing, picked it up, declared it beautiful, and said he was taking it home to prepare for us to eat. 

shortly thereafter, fujimoto-san, another neighbor, whose knife (and more broadly, cooking) skills are on point, came over to help Irie-san’s wife out with getting the thing diced up. i’ve never seen anything like it in my life. next thing you know there’s a small group of us over there, drinking a bit and helping get this thing cut and sliced up. hardest part was getting the skin peeled off the wings (fins? flaps?), for sure. but man, you wouldn’t believe the amount of meat on this thing! more than enough to divvy up and send home with everyone present, along with plenty for all of us to munch on while we chatted and hung out. it was awesome. something that simply never could’ve happened growing up in merrimack, new hampshire, that’s for sure.