raw; it is also boiled, pickled, or fried; it is often made into soup.
Sea-slugs, cuttle-fish, and other creatures which we consider the mere
offal of the sea, are eagerly devoured by the Japanese.

At the vegetable-stall there will be a great variety of things for
sale--beans, peas, potatoes, maize, buckwheat, carrots, lettuce, turnips,
squash, musk- and water-melons, cucumbers, spinach, garlic, onions, leeks,
chillies, capucams (the produce of the egg-plant), and a score of other
things, including yellow chrysanthemum blossoms and the roots and seeds of
the lotus. The Japanese eat almost everything that grows, for they delight
in dock and ferns, in wild ginger and bamboo shoots, and consider the last
a great tit-bit.

But to Europeans the Japanese vegetables seem very tasteless, and the chief
of them all is very much disliked by Westerners. This is the famous daikon,
the mighty Japanese radish, beloved among the poorer classes in its native
land and abhorred by foreigners. It grows to an immense size, being often
seen a yard long and as thick as a man's arm. When fresh it is harmless
enough, but the Japanese love to pickle it, and Mrs. Bishop remarks:

"It is slightly dried and then pickled in brine, with rice bran. It is very
porous, and absorbs a good deal of the pickle in the three months in which
it lies in it, and then has a smell so awful that it is difficult to remain
in a house in which it is being eaten. It is the worst smell I know of
except that of a skunk!"

The pickle-seller's stall must not be forgotten, for the Japanese flavour
their rather tasteless food with a wonderful variety of pickles and sauces.
The great sauce is soy, made from fermented wheat and beans with salt and
vinegar, and at times sake is added to it to heighten its flavour. This