私は 二回 蛸に 噛みました (Watashi wa nikai tako ni kamimashita)= I was bit by an octopus twice.
蛸が 恐れて 怒れた だ から、私に 墨を かけた。(Tako ga okorete osoreta da kara, watashi ni sumi o kakemashita) = Since the octopus was pissed off and scared, he sprayed ink on my shirt.
Tonight at 6:00 there was a live octopus in a bucket on my kitchen floor. By 8:30, it had become a delicious dinner in my stomach.
I just finished eating the tentacles that grabbed my finger earlier this afternoon. The mouth that bit me, with its two small sharp teeth, I just chewed up. The brain that drove the siphon to spit water at me, three feet in the air, and to spray ink across my neck and shirt, is sitting on the cutting board in my kitchen. Yellow mush.
My friend Koichi Morikawa took me octopus fishing this afternoon, after I finished teaching Halloween at the library's English-playtime. We drove to Sami beach on the Seto Inland Sea, about 30 minutes southeast of Yakage. Sami is one of the "hundred best beaches in Japan", according to the Japanese government sign, and in my experience I'd say it's earned it. Sami looks out on the Hershey-kiss shaped islands of the Seto, a sea weirdly like the Aegean: bright blue water speckled with islands, and the ubiquitous green hills of Okayama across the blue.
On the way there, we grabbed tempura udon at Koichi's favorite spot, and talked about Full House, Koichi's favorite American TV show to watch for learning English. Koichi taught me some new kanji, and I told him about fishing for catfish, bream and bass with my Dad on the James, and on the lakes in Chapman. I told him about Brett and my early morning catfishing excursions to Belle Isle, with McDonald's breakfast and nobody but the herons out downtown, and to the fishing hole and our battles with monster catfish at Dover lake.
Octopus fishing is like any ocean fishing, except that you use a crazy-long rod and a gnarly looking hook with a bright pink lure, which apparently looks like the shellfish that octopus eat. As Koichi and I were casting along the shore, looking out on the Hershey-kiss islands and the mountains across the water, a 4th grade girl came over to ask Koichi if he'd caught any tako yet (not Mexican food, but octopus in Japanese). I was surprised how friendly and casual she was with a stranger-- very rural-Japanese little girl. She reminded me of Tsugumi, from Banana Yoshimoto's novel "Goodbye, Tsugumi"-- an uninhibited beach girl, who grows up along the sea shore and speaks bluntly to everyone she meets. Our Tsugumi instantly called Koichi "oji-san"-- "grandpa", or old man, in a cutely affectionate, familial way. And she tagged along with us all day. She seemed excited to learn I was an elementary school teacher, and surprised that I spoke to her in Japanese. She was one of the calmest 4th graders I've seen-- quiet, serious, companionable. She spent all afternoon just casting her reel next to a 55 year old Japanese man and a 23 year old gaijin from Virginia.
Koichi caught the octopus that ended up on my plate at about 3:00, after a peaceful hour of casting, reeling, watching the seagulls, and practicing Japanese vocab in my head. I caught my first as the sun was setting and the tide rising, about 5:00.
This animal was amazing. Koichi laughed at me later when I called it that-- an "animal"-- because he says "We Japanese don't say octopus is 'animal'. It is fish." He was concerned that I was becoming too attached to the octopus, and might feel sad about killing and eating it. After taking a bunch of photos of me checking it out, holding and watching and getting ink-sprayed and bit by the octopus, Koichi laughed and said he thinks I am a scientist.
I did feel that marine biology itch again, that I remember from snorkeling with DBow's family in Hawaii after college freshman year. Seeing an octopus up close made me appreciate how similar the ocean is to outer space. These creatures don't seem like they come from our world. For one thing, their eyes seem disturbingly intelligent, like an extraterrestrial life form, and their freakishly soft bodies move fast and agile in your fingers. The suction cups are much stronger than I'd imagined. When I reached into the bucket to touch one, it sucked instantly onto three of my fingertips and wouldn't let go. When an octopus attached itself to the side of the bucket, there was no way you could pry it loose. But on the other hand, they also seem like sophisticated robots in their reflexes-- wriggling through your fingers, turning themselves to mush like a Marvel superhero, tentacles softening, tightening. When Koichi's octopus fell off his hook, it started crawling towards the shoreline, fast. I had to guard it while he went back to get the bucket. Watching alert predator eyes.
My brother showed me a nature channel video one time of an octopus in a two-chamber tank who liked to eat in the chamber where he slept. If he was fed in the other room, the octopus would actually break the shellfish into tiny pieces with its two razer-sharp teeth, push the pieces through a tiny hole between the rooms, then squish himself through the hole like putty and eat his meal where he wanted it. I didn't see these octopuses do anything smarter than blasting me across the neck with jet-black ink, but they did seem eerily, foreignly, coldly smart. Made me think of androids in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" or "Necromancer", hardwired for killing and survival.
Koichi let me have his octopus. When we got back to my house at 6 tonight, he unloaded the blue bucket from his car and poured it in a bucket in my kitchen.
I asked if I could keep it alive for a while as a pet. But Koichi pointed out that octopus need to live in salt water to survive. It has to be a certain kind of salt, too (His son knows, because he's been making "seawater" for school). And we don't live anywhere near ocean. However.
All you have to do to cook an octopus: Boil water, add soy sauce. Add octopus.
I killed my octopus by accident. When we got inside, I realized he might not be comfortable in the bucket he was in, which was pitch-black with ink that he'd tried to spray in my eyes. So I decided to dump the black water out in my bathtub, and refill it with new water. There was a tree frog stuck to my shower wall as I refilled the bucket with lukewarm bathwater. The octopus was already pretty zoned out, after spending all afternoon in a bucket of fresh water, and he didn't budge as the tap ran over him. But it wasn't until I put the bucket back down in the kitchen that I noticed he was acting kind of dead. The tentacles were curled up around the body in rigor mortis. I'm not sure if it was the change of water, or that the water I added was too warm for him, or if he had just spent too much time outside of salt water and died of oxygen deprivation. But by the time my rice was cooked and the water was boiled, it was a dead-looking octopus that I dropped in the pot.
After a few seconds of that to be absolutely sure I wasn't sticking a knife in a living animal, I pulled it back out to dissect, and cut the guts out. I made a mess when my knife hit the ink sac. But luckily I was cutting over cardboard. It looked like I'd broken a fountain pen.
Octopus insides are incredibly simple. Yellow mushy brain, white lungs, a tiny red heart and brown liver, black ink sac with enough ink to sign a few declarations, and a tough white digestive tube that enters and exits from the same hole in the middle of the tentacles. It takes just a minute to scrape all of this out of the body cavity, and you're suddenly left with something that looks like food. Well, like food if you've lived long in Japan. Chewy white meat, ready to be boiled in soy sauce. I've lived here long enough that the sight of rubbery white tentacles honestly makes my mouth water.
For more photos of octopus in all stages from ocean to plate, see my latest Facebook album.
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