I was reasonably adventurous from a food point of view, and liked almost everything I tried. On my “never again” list are:

* Red bean paste
* Uni (sea urchin gonads) - the texture was rather furry and it tasted awful
* Special salted raw fish guts - looked and smelled like bait/ we ordered this by mistake, and could not bring ourselves to taste it. The waitress took it away.

I was never brave enough to try blowfish. My understanding is that a skilled chef will leave just enough of the neurotoxin in to make your lips and tongue tingle, but not enough to kill you. Too much risk for me.

Desserts were often disappointing. There were many little dessert shops, and everything looked exquisite, but often had almost NO taste.

The story behind the raw fish guts - cultural ignorance/naïveté. We were at a restaurant off-base that was very popular with both local folks and the Air Force personnel. Huge menu, printed in both Japanese and English. We thought we were ordering “braised mushrooms.” Boy, were we wrong.

Our mistake was assuming that the English descriptions were first, with the Japanese printed underneath. We pointed to what we thought was the description for the mushrooms. My then-date, now-husband, noticed that the waitress had a rather bemused expression on her face. When a bowl of malodorous, slimy pink stuff was delivered to our table,we figured out what we had done wrong.

The United States USES entirely too much sugar and salt in the food here. Most Japanese and Asians in general find that the pastry shops make food taste almost too sweet for their taste. Its like KETCHUP, you cover the food in it and there is only the taste of Ketchup.

...of view of one born and raised on American recipes/foods and am speaking only for myself.

His food was exquisite.

Sitting at the bar one night after dinner, I asked what the stuff in the bottles on the shelves was. Looked like some sort of herbs or strange vegetables.

He didn't say what they were, but did say he wouldn't serve them because they could be poisonous to us Westerners.

I still don't know if he was joking.