In Japan every region has its own special food. Like you know how in Saskabush if you go around Yorkton you're going to get perogies every day but if you head to North Battleford sometimes you get mashed potatoes instead of perogies? Or how if you're in the far north you might get moose sausage at the Farmer's Day festival, but if you go down south you're more likely to get deer sausage? It's like that, but different.

For example, around Kochi the speciality is bonito. A dark fleshed fish, bonito is most often eaten raw, as sushi or sashimi. But the real sweet stuff that everyone's grandma serves at New Year's or Ichi-ni-san Day is bonito tataki, which is seared bonito seasoned with vinegar and eaten with garlic, soy sauce and some greenery, usually shredded cabbage or lettuce. It's delicious.

Susaki, meanwhile, is famous for nabayaki ramen, which is bland and often overcooked, but comes in a clay pot. This, apparently, is akin to an albino gorilla, which is to say unique, so much so that the city is trying to build a tourist industry around the idea. Think Berry Barn meets Chinese noodles.

And Sakawa? The speciality there is sake, which it brews in immense quantities (best served warm, by the way).

So anyway, in Kyushu they have their own special food.

In Aso-san they really enjoy their uma sashimi, or raw horse meat. Those beautiful horses out to pasture in the shadow of the belching, sputtering volcano? Don't worry, they're being put to good use. When I got back to the office everyone wanted to know if I had tried a few slices of Mr. Ed. Of course I hadn't. I have to admit, the idea grossed me out a little. I don't know if I could have eaten it, even if I'd wanted to.

In Unzen, they like their onsen tamago, or backward boiled eggs. To cook, they throw normal eggs into the hot spring water, which isn't quite boiling. After a couple hours the yolk is cooked but the white is raw. I couldn't eat that one either.

In Nagasaki, the speciality was champon, which is a Chinese soup and noodle deal, very similar to ramen, but more delicious. It had octopus, fish, shrimp, beef, pork, baby peas, bok choy, sprouts and wheat noodles in a milky fish broth. I ate a bowl in downtown Nagasaki, while waiting for the rain to let up, during which a Buddhist priest walked by banging a taiko drum.

And finally, in Haki to Taki or whatever it was called, they really seem to dig whale meat. This is the one that gets me a little hot under the collar. It's illegal to hunt whales for commercial purposes, but luckily for Japanese whale lovers everywhere, the Japanese hunt is for strictly scientific purposes. (Everyone here thinks they want to scientifically calculate the absolute most Japanese people will pay to eat whale meat.) At the sushi place where we ate, there was a huge pink hunk of flesh, which was probably about 1/1,000,000th of a whale, and which was probably worth as much as a new flat screen digital TV. Needless to say, I didn't eat that one either.