I have eaten many unfamiliar things since I arrived in Japan last week. Most were delicious. Some had eyes staring up at me -- the raw lobster sashimi I enjoyed in Nichinan was laid across the body of the crustacean, whose eye stalks seemed to follow me as I picked up each curved layer with chopsticks. At least he didn't have to be boiled alive, I thought. And then I wondered just how he had met his end.

 
But just now,  I think I may have eaten the strangest thing yet -- a mashed potato sandwich. I grabbed what appeared to be an egg salad/salami/cream cheese combo in the hotel canteen in Tokyo because I didn't feel like eating alone, and I was hungry. The half-sandwich was accompanied by a 500ml Asahi super dry beer (being consumed as I write, so I'd better finish before my lucidity begins to fail).

The egg salad seemed normal. The salami wasn't salami, but it was a salted meat, so it passed muster. But the white sandwich (on white bread, with the crusts trimmed off) tasted just like mashed potato. I swear it was mashed potato and mayonnaise.

Even at my most white-bread moment, I have never made a mashed potato sandwich. Even on Thanksgiving night, when the fridge is filled with mashed potatoes and there's a loaf of Wonder Bread calling my name, I have never made a mashed potato sandwich. It makes me think that the Japanese food marketing board got together and said -- what do you think Americans, Brits and Aussies who can't handle sushi would want to eat? And somewhere, from the back of the room, someone called out, "Mashed potato sandwich."