Beaten by the Fish...

Saturday marked the end of my pendultimate quarter! It also marked the general "spring break" for the academic population of Davis, and even though three quarters of the appartment roommates are no longer students, we decided to celebrate anyways by going out to the special "all you can eat" sushi hour at Sushi Nobu's, Jeff Tan's reccomendation. So we went, all five of us.

Now, when I go to a special "all you can eat hour" at a joint, I usually expect them to be secretly hoping that you won't completely eat them out of business. As for Nobu's, I had just settled myself in my seat when this old Japanese lady marches up and shoves one of the largest platters full of sushi in my face. I wasn't exactly sure what to do. So she explained: "TAKE!" she half yelled - "just go ahead and grab some plates" Dave Tan interpreted. So we all reached over and grabbed between one and two plates of sushi apiece. Abaited, the old woman walked away to yell at other tables.

About 45 seconds later she returned, with a second platter. "TAKE!". I had barely had time to separate my little wooden chopsticks from the package and consume my first sushi thing. But she glowered at us until we each grabbed yet another plate. This process continued - in the short space that she was gone, we would all hurredly consume as much as we could so as to be prepared for the next platter that would arrive. She would not take the platters away from our faces until someone had taken an item from it. If less than three items were taken from it, a look of disgust would be directed towards each of us as if to say "you fools, you are strong young men, you should be able to eat MORE! You cannot beat us!". It was disconcerting.

Ten minutes from the time the first platter had been forced upon us, everyone was full to bursting. Five young working men, not exactly small either (well, except me), and we were completely beaten. Still, we valiantly tried to abait the old woman's distate. When we looked as if we were not going to take anything from her platter, she would narrow her eyes, regarding us all with contempt and question, "ORDER?". So one of us would speak up and suggest his favorite sushi for the cooks to work on. She would nod, only slightly satisfied, but then direct her iron gaze towards the rest of us. "ONLY ONE ORDER?" she would question in a thundering tone, and cowering, we would nod and repeat "yes, just that one..."

We spent about fifteen minutes there - upon admitting our defeate that we were full and could not man up to eat any more, she nodded with a look of half triumph and half contempt that was, when we made it to the safety of the outdoors, absolutely hilarious.

We spent the next hour doubled up in laughter over what a strange dining experience it had been for us!