that time we ate coco curry and BLWEGHAHOFEBLEH gross

Curry House Coco Ichibanya is a famous curry rice restaurant chain in Japan.

There is nothing ichiban (一番, "best; number 1") about it. Unless someone asks the question "what is the second¹ saltiest thing on the planet that I could put in my mouth?" And the answer is "well it's a close tie between a plate of coco curry and the entire ocean but like i guess the ichiban karai (辛い, salty/spicy) of the two would be the coco curry".

There is a Coco Curry in my town. Technically there are two, but one of them is "Coco Curry House", an express version that doesn't have ichiban in the title (and honestly, props to it for not lying). It seems like everybody eats there. You could ask your middle-aged leather-skinned PE teacher "hey sumimasen what did your obaa-san's plumber-kun eat for lunch yesterday" and he'd be like "well I chotto don't know for sure but probably coco or some shit please go away i hate your white face."

The very first date I went on in Japan, the topic of coco's came up. NOT as an option for restaurants because I plainly come across as a classy broad who will only allow her date to buy her dinner at prestigious restaurants like the Subway counter in the konbini across from Sunflower Pachinko. But just in general, it came up organically. He was a 6'3 marine with rippling muscles and he wanted to make sure his manliness wasn't called into question. Letting me know he orders Spice Level 8 at Coco's was clearly the way to do that.

I have eaten coco curry exactly point five times in my life. I refuse to count it as an entire experience because I literally managed to swallow three spoonfuls before succumbing to the crushing intensity of the shio-karai flavour. And honestly, I could drink all the (fresh)water in the world and still not be able to forget. That saltiness is a part of me now.

Last winter, I went on a New Year's trip to Kyoto and Tokyo with my fellow ALT Cynthia and her friend Michelle. We wanted to try a famous burger restaurant in shinjuku but found it to be completely packed, as were most of the restaurants. With tummies rumbling and nary a konbini onigiri in sight, we decided to book it over to coco's, as it was the only restaurant for blocks without a line around the corner. In hindsight, this was extremely suss.

On paper, coco's seems like a good shout. Like most places, you'd be hard-pressed to find a server comfortable with taking your order in English. But they have bilingual menus, and they aren't the worst-translated I've seen.

The menu looks pretty varied, including a fair number of curry-free dishes (which honestly are your best bet if you eat there, IMO). If you do decide to take your chance with the hell curry, you can personalize your order with the rice portion you prefer, type of curry sauce, spiciness level of the curry, mildness of the sauce, add-ons and toppings.

I went for the chicken katsu curry, because I didn't want to get too crazy but still wanted a good time. In the end, やっぱり I should have gone for something more mainstream like Hamburg Sausage Spinach. I ended up with a personalized plate of heartbreak and surprisingly few mushrooms considering the add-on was like 200 yen.

Cynthia, Michelle and I sampled spice levels 10, 3 and 5, respectively. We left the restaurants with plates that were barely touched, yet still felt molested by the flavour (KT said I'm not allowed to say that but honestly it's the mood). We unanimously agree the Coco curry is among the top 5 worst things we've put in our mouths in Japan. For me, it is unequivocably the ichiban worst.

To be completely fair, you might find that you really enjoy Coco's. Its locations are solidly-rated on trip advisor by locals and tourists alike. Our shortcoming here might have been in assuming that since higher spice levels exist, that they would have any chance of tasting like food. Japanese cuisine is notoriously mild, to the point that items marketed as "double chili pepper emoji spicy" tend to rank lower than a glass of lukewarm water on the Scoville scale. In addition, "spicy" and "salty" aren't separate concepts in the Japanese lexicon. The word 辛い (からい karai) means both spicy and salty. If you want to get into technicalities you could use 塩辛い（'shio-karai', because shio means salt), but in some dialects (especially in 関西), 辛い and 塩辛い are still not distinguished in daily life, so saying shiokarai is only marginally more normal than insisting on calling salt "sodium chloride" like Jimmy Neutron. I live in Hiroshima, where I've mostly heard the one word used with both meanings interchangeably.

Additionally, 辛い can be read as つらい (tsurai) . This adjective has a completely different meaning, and it happens to be close to salty as in "salty experience", "upset" or "painful experience". My time at Coco's was a tsurai experience, and I still feel very salty about it.

Grant the Marine could take Coco spice level 8/10. In theory, he was a spicy guy with a spicy job and even spicier crew cut. In practice, however, his spice level was like 11/10- and not necessarily in a good way because while he had a tattoo of Bubble Buddy from Spongebob, successfully convinced me to pretend to be an anti-drug task force, and we got to second base on the ground of the Hiroshima Peace Park, I found out later that he also voted for Trump in the 2016 US election. The fact that I allowed a Trump-supporter to place his hands upon my bosom (and dick in my mouth- cumming in clutch with #2 on the 'worst things in my mouth' list²) is a lasting trauma. It is only marginally less viscerally upsetting than the curry, because while he left fingerprint bruises on my tiddy, those healed after a few days. The salt burn scars on my tongue, however, will last a lifetime.

So TLDR it makes sense that their "spicy" curry was saltier than a 12 year old white boy who lost Mario Kart on his twitch stream, but that doesn't mean I can't or won't sue Coco for emotional damages.

¹ The first saltiest thing on the planet would be just like a literal chunk of salt.

² In case it wasn't clear, the second worst thing I've put in my mouth in Japan was Grant's semen k thanks bye