Negitoro Onigiri (Raw Tuna and Green Onion Rice Ball)

Brand: Ministop

Cost: 130 yen

Found At: Ministop

There is something decidedly Melvillian about this onigiri. The limp, stale seaweed wrap and stiff, flavorless rice takes you to the cold, damp fishing boats, hunting the tuna off the coast of Newfoundland. Before you can unlock the subtle flavor of the raw tuna, you must first suffer for it, fighting your way through the turbulent oceans of tasteless rice. Yet when you, at last, reach the center, you are not greeted by a lovely, fresh streak of pink tuna-flesh, but instead by a vomit colored mix of green and pink that somehow tastes of neither tuna nor green onion. In that moment of vast disappointment, you feel like Ahab, dragged down by the very thing in which you had set all your hopes.

Though, to be fair, I still ate all of it.