I wanted to post a photo of a pinhead, but that would be juvenile and mean. So here's a photo from Stuart Gibson, instead. Isn't it lovely? You should buy a print.

Recently, we had an email from a reader, who, in his own barely-literate fashion, mentioned that we didn't love curry and hot sauce as much as he does.  Or we love it too much.  Oh, I forget what he said, to be honest, partly because it was mostly gibberish and mostly because we're not really interested in negative opinions around here.  The world is full of negative stuff; we want to bring the love, and tell everyone about how much awesome there is in the world, if you'll only take the time to look for it.

In point of fact, we don't even have to look that hard.  In one twenty-minute SMS chat the other night, Lincoln and I managed to come up with topic ideas for at least a hundred new articles, ranging from the arts to literature to pop culture and philosophies.  (Okay, full disclosure: the last fifteen minutes was just us listing Japanese AV idols.)

But one thing our microcephalic fan mentioned stuck with me, specifically, the word "curry."  Man, I love curry, and so does Lincoln.

CoCo Ichibanya

I was a bit surprised to find that the Japanese are mental for curry.  When one thinks of the Japanese and Japanese cuisine, the phrase "spicy enough to melt the enamel on your teeth" does not spring to mind.

But most of them love the stuff.  It's a dinnertime staple in many homes, with moms either making their own recipe from scratch or buying blocks of roux to mix with vegetables.  If you're too busy to cook, you can get a bowl of microwavable rice and a retort pouch of curry sauce and whip up some at the office. 

If you're too busy to cook and your mom lives three prefectures away, you can go to a curry house and get down on the food there.  My personal favorite, and the favorite of many of my friends in Kyoto, is a chain of places called CoCo Ichibanya, or, as we called it, "CoCoIchi."

CoCo Ichi has restaurants located all over Japan, plus some in China and, if the Internet is to be believed, at least one in Hawaii.  (That's not shocking; Hawaii is both a state and a prefecture.)  The restaurants are uniformly clean and well-lit, and the menus are available in something like fourteen different languages, no joke. 

Man, I am getting hungry just LOOKING at this. Aren't you?

Even if the staff can't find the international menu, however, you can still get hooked up by looking at the regular Japanese menu, which is all about lovely photos of the food and, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't have any scary hidden tentacles or weird animal bits.  You can get a plate of curry with tentacles and weird animal bits, if such takes your fancy; it's just not hidden.  What you see on the menu is pretty much what you get.

Having picked out your basic dish, say, a nice plate of menchi curry, for instance, you now can customize it.  Menchi, in this case, is basically a chicken-fried hamburger, kind of like what you see in the picture there.  To start with, you tell your server how much rice you want.  Three hundred grams is about standard, but you can pay extra in hundred-gram increments and load up that platter, all the way up to five hundred grams.  That's right around a pound of rice.  You can also get less.

Then you order any extra toppings you might like on your curry, such as corn or sliced dried garlic, or some tuna fish, or egg, or whatever else.

This logo should be on all CoCo Ichi menus.

But the Bonus Killer Excellent here is really reserved for the sauce. Japanese immigration policy isn't enforced as strictly as are the Sauce Rules at CoCo Ichibanya.  Ready?  Here they are.

1. Sauce is available in ten levels.

2. Level One is the mildest, suitable for feeding to a sick infant or for cleaning contact lenses.

3. Level Ten is the most powerful substance currently available for legal purchase in Japan.

4. Anyone at all may order Levels One through Five at any time.

5. Upon ordering and completely consuming an order of Level Five curry, the diner is issued an official card, signed by the restaurant manager, to that effect.

6. On that diner's next visit, assuming his or her internal organs have not exploded from eating the Level Five curry, he or she is permitted to order the Level Six curry only.

7. Upon consuming the Level Six curry without bursting into flames right there at the counter, the diner's card will be amended to the next level.

8. This process continues, level by level, until the diner attains Level Ten, at which point fusion occurs.

I am not making these rules up.  My friend Andy tried like crazy to get them to let him skip straight to Level Seven.  ("It's okay," he protested, "I'm British and I'm black.")  No dice.  It's Japan, be prepared to follow the rules.

By the way, I'm known for my love of all things spicy.  I once drank a shot glass of Tobasco to win a bar bet.

But eating anything over Level Three from CoCo Ichi results in an unpleasant condition that I will not describe here, save to say that I have named it "Whiz of Fire."

CoCo Ichi have their own PS2 game. Do YOU have your own video game? Didn't think so. I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy this next time I hit Sofmap.

As if that wasn't enough, really dedicated curry eaters can participate in The Contest.

The Contest doesn't have as many rules as The Sauce, but it still requires the heart of a lion.  (Not literally.  At least, I didn't see Heart of Lion on the menu.  Maybe you have to ask for it special.) 

It's very simple.  A plate of curry is brought to you, and you have to eat it in, I think, twenty minutes or less.  If you win, your meal is free, and a photo of you is posted on the wall at the restaurant, and you get a little certificate.

Nice, huh?  I was going to try this when I first moved to Japan.

"It'll be simple," I figured. "I'm twice the size of most Japanese guys, plus the portions here are always so titchy.  I could probably eat two or three."

Hold it right there, Slacker-san.  My pal Hiroyuki Genta, former winner of the Pike's Peak Rally and no stranger to eating loads of chow himself, set me straight.

First, this particular portion isn't so titchy.  They start off with a kilo of rice.  A kilogram is 2.2 pounds.  That's a lot of rice.

Then, they pour on about that much curry, so we're talking about four and a half pounds of food. 

"So?" You sneer.  "I'm an American; we lead the world in obesity.  I can eat four or five pounds of Fritos at a go, no problem."

Yeah, Tubby, no you can't.  The curry is heated to a temperature right up around that of boiling lead.  Seriously, they warn you not to drip any of it on your shirt, because it will just stick to your skin and burn.  It's a mean trick, but hey, they aren't there to give food away.

Oh, and finally?  It's Level Five, two levels above the Scoville rating that gives you the Bad Toilet Fear.

I never was able to man up enough to challenge The Contest.

Ironically, you look at the guys' photos on the wall?  It's all skinny college students.  Must be nice to have a metabolism.

Oh, all right. Here.

So, CoCo Ichibanya is a great combination of insane fun, excellent food, and the ever-present possibility of horrible after-effects that pretty much summed up my entire time in Japan. 

My own personal favorite, if I had to pick one?

Sausage curry.  That's a plate of curry with three or four deep-fried weiners on top.

300g of rice, 300 g of sauce.

Level Two Sauce.

Topped with corn, diced dried garlic, and a sliced boiled egg.

Mango milk to drink.

Man.  Now I'm hungry.