No amount of years will prepare you for the evening we just had, but now looking back its something I can say I've done and its another new experience to tell people back home about.

I have wanted to eat bear for quite some time now, and despite some of my friends seeing the inhumane side of it, I was able to blot that out entirely and decided that I would eat bear before I left Japan. My goal was finally realised at Karuba hunting restaurant in Kyoto. Only thanks to an easily excitable owner, we got a lot more than we bargained for!

6 of us met in Kyoto outside the Pig and Whistle and grabbed a bus 'towards the mountains', which turned out to be quite a fitting scenario for the place we were going. It looked like a small mountain cabin, with all of the furniture made of wood, and little BBQ sets built in to each table (turned out to be just for show, as the owner did what little cooking there was to be done for us)



We ordered drinks and had a look over the menu, with the owner also giving us his recommendations. We trusted him, since he was the one who hunted, gathered and prepared everything on the menu. Bear was the only thing on my mind, and my dreams were almost destroyed as the guy said bear was out of season, however luckily he had some smoked bear which he was keeping for just such an occasion



Here is our order as it came: smoked bear, BBQ wild boar, giant salad, raw deer, raw horse, BBQ grasshoppers, BBQ baby bees (read "maggots"), raw duck, more deer, smoked this time, and we topped it off with some rattlesnake-in-the-fucking-bottle Japanese sake. We also had the chance to eat some hornets, which according to the owner would kill you with two stings, and snake was on the menu but the smell would freak out the other customers so he asked us to come back next time for that.


The winner was the wild boar, which was pretty amazing. Just like huge chunky pork kebabs. Second place for me was the smoked deer, and then the rest blurred in to a unified third place. It was a pretty amazing experience, and we had a great group with all of us trying every thing that came, which was pretty impressive. We even took a doggie bag of bees and grasshoppers back to the Pig and Whistle for the locals to try