Octopus Balls

My partner in crime, Cindy, wrote the following little narrative about one of our excursions. This happened awhile ago, but here's to not letting it be forgotten!

Take it away, Cindy...

"So, a group of us met up to have dinner before our Japanese language class last night. We parked in the parking lot across from the Civic Center and decided to walk around town to find a place to eat. This should have been a simple task because there are many restaurants to choose from in downtown Iwakuni. As we set out (in the opposite direction of the town center for some reason) our colleague/VP adamantly insisted that we not choose a meal of intestines, octopus, or something else.....I don't know what because we must have tuned her out. (Sorry Mrs. Eittreim!)

We only had a little over an hour before class and we quickly realized that the direction we were headed was not good because eating places were scarce. In fact, we ended up turning around and walking back to a very small place that someone in our group had noticed. It was so small that the six of us barely fit inside. Eureka! We hit the jackpot. It was a specialty shop with just one very special item on the menu. I'm sure there is a great Japanese name for the food prepared there but we prefer the American name we chose...octopus balls.

I wish I could post pictures so you can see the way the cook carefully prepared the food. The batter was poured on a special pan. Pieces of octopus and I don't know what else were put into the batter. After the batter was partially cooked, more batter was added and then eventually the batter balls were turned and cooked on all sides. The end result was dumplings filled with octopus, sauce poured on top, and I don't know what else placed on top of that.

Obviously, our VP was thrilled with our dinner choice (see paragraph 1).

The taste? Different. We ate as many as we could, washed them down with Coke, and ordered ice cream cones to go."