For a Japanese friend's 65th birthday I gave her a piece of Jinenjo root so she could make some kind of special Japanese 65th birthday girl treat she had been raving about. You grate the root (ha! try that) and it ends up being this slimy gelatinous mess that makes raw egg seem like sand in comparison. This glop is poured over a bowl of hot rice into which a raw egg is stirred. It ends up being foamy and gelatinous and very, very slimy. My then GF jumped up from the table and ran into the bathroom, loudly retching. It took every bit of concentration I had to eat my bowl, while Toshiko was having the time of her life.
There were lots of other culinary adventures with Toshiko, many strange, but none as slimy. (I passed on the natto)
HA! I just wiki'ed the root and noted this passage:
Quote:
Non-food uses
The jelly-like substance made from grating the yam, tororojiru (Japanese: とろろ汁), is often served in, or alongside, a number of other dishes. Interestingly, perhaps, this was widely used in the Edo period as a personal lubricant for sexual activities,[citation needed] and it was thus considered improper for it to be eaten by a woman. This aversion also derives from the loud slurping sound one makes when eating it, which is considered to be un-ladylike.[1] However, now in Japan, it is usually accepted that women eat tororojiru with that kind of sound.
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Toshiko was making vague and joking remarks about sex and the greater the length of the root being more desirous. I think a lot of what she was saying went over my head partly because her English was so poor and since I was about 20 at the time and hadn't yet realized that 65 year olds had sex lives.