Would you like some more whale?

When I went to Australia I ate kangaroo. I was a little surprised that kangaroo was indeed something you could eat. For anyone curious I didn’t much care for it. It’s apparently best served on the rare side or it gets stringy, but I like my meat well done.

I should have expected that there would be some unfamiliar meats here in Japan. Different countries eat different things. They eat dog in Thailand. They eat guinea pigs in South America. Some places eat rat. I knew all of this. But Japan still surprises me with some of the things I’m eating.

The specialty dish of Kumamoto prefecture is basashi. Which is raw horse meat. The story behind this comes from way back when the castle was under siege and they had nothing left to eat. So they did what they had to do to stay alive and ate their horses. And became famous for it. So now the area is known for this dish and you can get it at many restaurants.

I’ve had it and it isn’t bad. Like I said before, I normally like my meat very well done, but served raw isn’t quite the same as rare. It’s served with onions and a soy sauce for dipping. It’s alright but not something I want all the time. Most foreigners I know here like it.


I really thought for a long time that horse would be the oddest thing I would eat in Japan. That was until one fateful day when I was at school. Lunch for the day was a soup, bread, milk, and a bit of breaded meat. The lunch period was about half over when the English teacher asked me, “Amanda-sensei, do you eat whale in America?” Now I had just seen a thing on the news about Americans protesting something about whaling in Japan (I wasn’t paying that much attention), so the question seemed topical. I simply answered, “No.” I am sure most of you know where this is going by now, but my teacher pointed at the meat we were having for lunch and said, “Ah. This is whale.”

My response was something on the lines of “…Huh. Really? …Well, then this is my first time eating whale.” I was pretty surprised. Whale, which is kujira in Japanese, was just not something I ever expected to be eating. I wasn’t appalled or anything by it. It was just really unexpected. The other surprising thing to me was that they waited so long to tell me. What if I did have some moral aversion to it? Surely they must know that some foreigners are very against the idea of eating whale. But then again I live on an island, so maybe it never occurred to them that anyone would have a problem with it.

And honestly it was pretty okay. Once I knew it was whale I tried to pay more attention to the flavor because I knew people would want to know what it was like. Before I knew it was whale I had assumed it was some sort of fried pork culet, because that was what the taste most closely resembled in my mind. Although it was distinctly different. It was breaded the same way as the pork cutlets are though, so the resemblance may have been from the breading and not the actual meat. It’s not my new favorite food or anything, but it was decently tasty.

And, because I know someone will ask, it was probably minke whale and yes the whale meat is “legal.” It’s a complicated issue that, like I said, has met with protest from other countries. Japan maintains a controlled whaling program in the name of scientific research. This subject is so intense and complicated it has its own Wikipedia page.

At least my introduction to whale meat was an innocent one. I have a friend here who distinctly said that she would eat almost anything but did not want to eat whale, and they served it to her anyway without telling her what it was. When she couldn’t place the flavor and asked what it was they told her. She was not amused.