This past week, I had the (mis)fortune of going on a trip to, among other places, Pennsylvania.
It was there that I learned one of the most important lessons in life imaginable:
Never eat sushi from a Japanese mall stand, no matter how cheap or tasty it may look.
Story:
It was the last day of a weeklong excursion away from FFXI, Aish*teru (I Love You), and one certain ex-girlfriend who wants me dead. In the past week, I had learned the very valuable lesson that Polish girls kiss better than Russian girls, but that isn't the point of the story here.
So I went to a mall, out of boredom, and an attempt to find something useful to do for a few hours before passing out in the hotel room.
I immediately found the local Borders bookstore, bought a copy of both The Voices of a Distant Star and my THIRD copy of A Clockwork Orange, and then crept my way down the broken esculator to the ground floor in an attempt to find something to eat.
There were all these restaurants, with various exotic smells ranging from the classic Big Mac at McDonalds to a German Roasted Nut place staffed by a midget. My eyes ranvished the various stands like a pissed off bunny who got accidentally diaga'd in The Bikiki Bay, when I finally saw it.
A small Japanese stand, with a moderately old Japanese lady working it. Walking over to it, I took a look at the menu and saw that among other things...
They had sushi for sale.
Jokingly, I asked her if she had any "sole sushi plus one" for sale and I immediately got rewarded with a strange look by her. Biting my lip hard to keep from laughing at my own idiotic joke, I took a look at the various sushi packages that were lined carefully behind the glass on ice, wrapped upon cellopane packages.
And then I saw it.
Tempura sushi, ten pieces for only $3.95.
I was ELATED!
Cheap tempura sushi, for only four bucks!, I thought. At home, at the local Japanese sushi shop, I found the price of sushi to be extravagant at around $7.00 dollars for six pieces. Keeping in mind that I am merely a poor proletariat being crushed underneath by the heel of the bourgeosis (I.e. I am a lowly employee at a medical clinic and a burger flipper at the local LJS/A&W shop), I couldn't dare to pass this deal up.
So I bought the sushi, forking over an old and folded five dollar bill for it.
Making my way over to a nearby table, I slapped my sushi down upon it, unwrapped it, and greedily ate it within a minute.
That was the last time for the next two hours I would feel totally right, where everything was okay in the world.
About ten minutes later, after I threw away the packaging, I was once again wondering around the mall, carring my precious book purchases at my side. Like most malls, this particular one had almost exclusively clothing/jewelry/tacky **** stores lining all of the floors. I had started to feel abit queasy at this point, but I pressed onwards, no having really anything else to do for the next hour or so until I could get into the hotel.
So looking at a map of the mall, I saw my choices:
1) Borders. While I loved me bookstores, I had already been there once so far, and I had gotten what I wanted from there already.
2) A mattress store. I had gone there earlier, and one of the male employees had hit on me. I think it was probably because I smelt like a tart's hankerchief because of some stuff that a woman had rubbed on my hands earlier on in the day. Because I had realized long ago that I am not into men, I immediately discarded that place.
3) The Disney store. Now, I had loved Disney as a child, and in fact...Mulan remains one of my favorite films to this day. And despite the fact that I was convinced that Disney was plotting to take over the world and force everyone to wear round black ears and sing the Mickey Mouse song repeatedly someday, I was still soft for the company.
So out of the three...
I picked the Disney store.
Making my way up (yet another) broken esculator, I found the said store. My trip up the immobile stairs wasn't helped by the fact that my stomach had started to seriously get pissed at me by this point, and I was beginning to feel like I was sweating buckets.
But eventually, I stumbled into the Disney store, and was rewarded with the sight of thousands upon thousands of Disney merchandise being crammed into every available space. There were about half a dozen kids, milling around with their bored parents inside the store, who were positively glowing at the possibility of getting to buy some <insert random Disney film> T-shirt or toy that they were probably gonna break or get brainwashed into doing Walt's wishes in the next couple hours.
I stumble over to the moderately giant sized Mickey Mouse statue that was in the middle of the store, who's feet was surrounded by several plush dolls of said mouse, with a giant smile and great big eyes upon it's face.
I looked down at the dolls, then as my eyes swung upwards towards the back of the store...I saw the damnable device that I instantly knew would be my undoing.
A giant TV screen, made up of four TV sets that were displaying a song from The Three Caballeros. As I watched the screen for a few seconds, I suddenly realized that three things were happening at once:
1. The screen was showing some surreal dance number, where a multitude of colors were swirling and flashing across the screen in a way that was unpleasant to my eyes even normally.
2. My stomach had just gotten alot worse the moment that I focused upon the TV set.
3. All the parents were pulling their kiddies away from where I was standing, as I then proceeded to launch projectile vomit all over the Mickey Mouse statue.
My body instantly crinkled over double as I continued to vomit against Mickey's chest, and it trinkled down upon the merchandise around his feet. All of the sushi came back up, and I could swear that that Japanese lady was probably laughing her *** off at me right now from three floors below. Finally, the flow subsided, and I stood up.
Now, when I throw up, I tend to act rather...sharply towards people, much like how I am when I am incredibly tired.
"Sir, are you okay?"
The voice came from a Disney employee, who was obviously freaking out over the fact that this twenty year-old unshavened (I had accidentally left my razor at home) guy had just thrown up in the store.
I gave him a smirk, and said flippantly "I just threw up, what do you think you dumbass?"
The employee got abit pissed at this statement, and calmly asked me to leave the store and never come back.
It was then that I learned a valuable lesson...
Never eat sushi from a Japanese mall stand.
Please take my advice to heart.
Edited, Aug 16th 2006 at 10:39am EDT by Nightsintdreams