Normally you buy dried jellyfish. You reconstitute it and use it in salads, stir fries and various other types of cooking. They don’t have a very strong taste; I think it’s mostly used for the firm texture. I think it’s safe for foreigners to try.
Grasshoppers (locusts) are similar in that you can’t really taste it. All you can taste is the soy sauce and mirin (sweet cooking wine) they are boiled in. The texture, however, is exactly what you would expect - crunchy.
By the way, the used panty vending machines are not “more than acceptable.” They are barely acceptable and only in certain areas, I think. However, porn magazine vending machines are more common.
Iran: The street the British Embassy used to be on in Tehran is now called “Bobby Sands Street.” If you are Irish, you can go to the Irish Embassy in Tehran for a Guinness, draft!
Caribbean: “Sweat Rice” is a concoction (think voodoo love potiony stuff) made by a woman to make a man fall in love with her. You get to decide how the sweat gets onto the rice.
Japan: In Gunma-ken, out walking. Very rural. A very gorgeous tiny Japanese old lady felt my breasts, my bum and asked to see my nipples. She was sure that I’d be a very good provider for my children!!
Also in Japan, seeing a 350lbs sumo wrestler and a blonde Aussie surf punk who were bouncing at a hostess club try to figure out what to do with a salary-man who had passed out on the street. A very crowded street in Roppongi. A classic.
France: Seeing real live rabbits WITH FUR in the window of the butcher’s shop.
Ireland: Chuckling as I watch a TD get physically removed from the Dail (Like the House of Lords, right?) for heckling. Mind you, heckling is allowed. They had to close down for 30 minutes because this guy refused to be ejected from the room.
Syria: Around easter they take little chicks and spraypaint them in neon colours. They go around with them in the streets and you can buy them. (Animal rights are not something people here are concerned with)
This isn’t THAT weird, but I thought it was funny.
While in Korea, I was using the bathroom of a Catholic church, and noticed that there was graffiti on the walls of the stall I was using. “How sacreligious!” I though - note that this was one of those HUGE, fancy churches with the statues and the inscense and stuff. Not an appropriate place to scrawl all over the walls, even if it WAS the bathroom.
So most of the graffiti was so-and-so loves that-guy, guess-who-was-here, but in the middle of it all, someone has scrawled out “GOD (in English) RULES (in Korean)”. Well, at least that seemed Church-appropriate. But very weird.
Only after a while did I realize that whatever rebellious youth had sharpied that daring statement had probably meant the popular singing group G.O.D.
Oh yeah, and the roasted silkworm larvae they sell on the street. It actually pretty tasty if you’re drunk enough.
I stayed for a few weeks with some Aka hill tribesmen in the early 80s. I was petting one of the local pooches one morning and wound up devouring the pup that evening. Barbecued.
The people I was living with were trying to be nice so I smiled and swallowed. S
Later in the same trip I got a memorable breakfast. An ancient woman scratched on the door of my room and delivered a pre-dawn breakfast tray:
1 pot of small steamed fresh water eels. (I thought they were snakes.)
1 bowl of sticky rice
1 platter of fried bull testicles. (The pantimime to describe the contents was truly odd coming from an old lady at 0430!)
And to wash it all down, green tea and tiny shots of clear rice-based moonshine.
