When It Goes Beyond Just Playing With Your Food

We are planning a trip to Japan for the Spring. My travel bug is flush with excitement, eager to witness Geishas scurrying through the streets of Kyoto, their heads bowed down, colorful beads and baubles jangling on their headdress. I cannot wait to stroll through the streets of Tokyo, marveling at the throngs of people, women in ponytails and platform sneakers, neon everywhere, a vibe of urgency and high energy. Keep moving. As I was planning the trip, dreamily reviewing shrines and buddhist temples and memorizing the don't lists -- don't be afraid to burp at your meal, don't hold hands in public, don't take a bath dirty (ummm, ok?) and don't tip the wait staff -- I had a hazy flashback of a disturbing food segment on the Travel Channel.

Let me back up a second here. I love animals. Really love them. I don't eat them, I rescue them when I can and I do believe that animal cruelty is a true sign of evil equal to that of human cruelty. Short and sweet, be kind and compassionate. So travel gets tricky for me. A homeless, injured dog limping through Israel was a vacation buzz kill when I cried for over an hour because I couldn't help him. China and other participating Asian countries are permanently off the travel list for their dog eating festivals. Probably too wimpy for India too because starving children hanging on to car windows as tourists drive by, leave me unable to ooh and aah at the Taj Majal. I suppose you could call me a simpleton and culturally judgmental. I prefer to call myself overly sensitive to suffering. Japan was a safe zone, albeit one my most devout tree hugging buddies would argue is a dark cold world of sushi, and it made its way on to the vacation short list.

Now back to the flashback. Didn't I quickly pound on the remote to change off a segment about the Japanese deep frying little sparrows and putting them on sticks? Why do I remember people picking little birds out of cage at a street food festival and vendors tossing them in boiling oil? Oy. This is a problem. So, I went online to strategize a way to avoid the avian torture areas, only to find there are a couple of other land mines are going to cause big travel hiccups if I can't manage to avoid them. Like the live fish grabbed out of tank, pinned to your plate and lightly flayed open so you can eat it while it gasps for air and flops around with desperation. Or the live baby eel soup where water is boiled and a piece of very cold tofu is put on the bottom with baby eels. Apparently the baby eels burrow into the cold tofu to escape being boiled to death, only to find that won't do the trick. The desired effect of this torture is just to have "swiss cheese like holes" in your tofu when it is served to you. Oh, ok. TOTALLY justified.

I am still going to Japan. I will still be grateful for the life experience and the memories and will do my best to hopscotch around the danger zones. But I do find myself shaking my head sadly. If only kindness and compassion were on every menu around the world. What a wonderful world that would be,