I'm Japanese but I don't like sushi very much. Is it so strange?

Nico : Actually, I didn't think so many people would be surprised that I don't like sushi very much.

There was this one thing at school when I studied `instructions' in English. In the class, my teacher told us to prepare the instruction of cooking your country's food. Then she said, "For example, Nico will do sushi." I knew sushi is really popular as Japanese dish but sushi is only one Japanese dish and I don't like it very much. I have never eaten sushi since I came to live in Australia because I didn't want to. Then I told her "I won't. Because I don't like it". My teacher asked me, "Then what did you eat in Japan?"

taken from http://www.president.co.jp/uploads/pics/1003.jpg

The main reason that I don't like sushi comes from cucumber. I hate cucumber worse than anything. Even though it sits next to another things and touches them just a bit, I can't eat both of them. If you mix it in a salad, I can't eat the whole salad. Well, sushi which is called `maki-zushi' in Japan, often uses cucumber for the ingredients. 


The second reason is `kanpyo' which is also one of the ingredients. Kanpyo is dried gourd shavings. I hate the texture too. In the first place, I think there are lots of Japanese people who have no idea why kanpyo is in the ingredients. 

I hate chirashi-zushi for the same reason.

chirashi-zushi  taken from http://image.excite.co.jp/jp/erecipe/recipe/9/7/9721583090b5c5fdf486f09ab0854b02/e7618a2c34da5c96109fe85b13c06a51.jpeg

taken from Wikipedia.com

At first, I don't like rice vinegar very much either but I like nigiri-zushi. Raw fish and vinegar rice match each other and nigiri-zushi is usually just fish, rice and wasabi. I don't need to worry about cucumber and kanpyo.

`karaage' taken from http://d3921.cpcdn.com/recipes/2016790/280/2c6753ca839b14f089d20aafa3ccc1ce.jpg?u=246320&p=1352005795

Well, I'd like to get back the topic of school. The final day of term one, we had a party in our class room. My teacher told us to bring a dish which is your country's. Though I wanted to bring karaage to school at first, I thought it would be hard to cook early in the morning. Besides, it wouldn't be so yummy after reheating.  
   
Finally, I decided to bring Japanese rice cracker. At the party, one of our English tutors said to me, "I'd like you to bring sushi next time!" I'll ask MJ to make it next time.  

By the way, I'm using `zushi ' instead of `sushi ' in this blog. It means sushi but it is just a euphonic change.