Recently one of our good friends had to return to the US (one of the downsides of living in Japan is having to leave at some point), so we had a final farewell game night.

To make it official and ceremonial they decided to crack out their bottle of habushu, a kind of sake made by fermenting a deadly Okinawan pitviper (the habu) in awamori. Apparently the locals will fill a bathtub with moonshine and lure live snakes into it, where the alcohol will kill it and preserve it, innards and all. This particular habu had been fermenting for over 30-something years, and as it reeks to high heaven they kept it in a sealed bottle, in a trash bag, in a vinyl sack, in a closet by the front door.

As I haven’t found many Japanese foods I didn’t like, and as I’m not one to pass up a new experience, I decided to give it a try.

Presenting the habu

A closeup

3, 2, 1...

Aaaaargh!!!

Rinsing does nothing!

Gargling does nothing!

Ready for game night...

Needless to say, it was the foulest thing I’d drank in a long time (the absolute foulest being a bottle of long-expired Arizona iced tea which I unknowingly half-chugged only to find it had congealed into a sweet, gelatinous state). The worst part was that after we had re-sealed it and washed our mouths, hands, cups, and everything else it had touched, the smell kept creeping back into the room and making us queasy.

As a going away present, they bequeathed the habushu onto us. Most likely because there’s no way that thing would have cleared customs… It now sits in its jar in its sack in its vinyl bag in the space next to our front door.