I was a vegetarian longer than almost anything else. I’ve been female longer, but that’s about it. I was vegetarian for 18 years, until New Year’s Day 2012. That was the day I found out I got the job in Japan, and started eating meat.

It was an easy decision, because of my experiences there in 2010. Contrary to popular (American) belief, Japan is not a haven for vegetarians – there’s meat everywhere, of all kinds. And in a land where a famous saying is the nail that sticks up gets hammered down, being a vegetarian is…weird. Making special requests at restaurants isn’t usually done. Asking if something has meat at someone’s home is definitely not done. And neither of them are done at all if you don’t speak Japanese. It’s inconvenient, socially awkward, bland, and expensive to be vegetarian in Japan. Yeah, you can do it (especially if you look the other way on bonito flakes and broths), but it’s hard. It’s also not healthy – junk food is pretty reliably vegetarian, so I found myself eating a lot of it during my internship, and that’s not good.

So I had already decided, when I applied for the job, that if I got it I would quit vegetarianism. The United States is a culture where being a vegetarian is easy, culturally acceptable, and healthy. Japan is simply not set up that way, and if I’m going to be in a different culture, I should adapt to them – this goes for any culture, but especially one as obsessed with conformity as Japan. I was kind of looking forward to the idea, but I wasn’t going to quit until I actually got the job – no point changing my principles early.

When I got the job, on the 1st, I had some cheeseburger Doritos – yes, they exist, and my wife tells me they taste like the real thing. They have beef flavoring, so technically this was my first meat. On the 2nd, we went to a local Vietnamese place. :A: got grilled chicken with lime, and I had a little bite…it was so good. I got chicken pho, and picked out most of the chicken (brought it home for later). I was a little appalled to realize what body parts I was eating, and it felt so strange to put them into my mouth, but I did it. Since then I’ve had a bite of pork burrito, a bite of chicken tamale, a small McDonald’s fries (honestly I don’t think the beef tallow spray makes them any better than anyone else’s fries), two pieces of pepperoni and sausage pizza, some of the leftover chicken, and…beef stroganoff. That was tonight, and it was amazing. The initial “Alice down the rabbit hole” feeling I had when putting meat into my mouth has only faded by about 10%, but it is fading. It’s what people have told me all along: meat tastes good.

There’s so much I want to try before going to Japan. I posted on reddit to ask for the best burger place, and they recommended several; I think I’ve picked Elevation Burger but I want a Five Guys burger too. I want a tuna fish sandwich. I want a ham and cheese sandwich at Subway. I want BBQ at Famous Dave’s down the street from me. How do you eat ribs? I don’t know yet! I want Lunchables, maybe, though they’re kinda weird. I want some kind of sweet jerky thing. I want…so many things!

I don’t know if I’ll go back to vegetarianism when I return to the U.S. in 2013. Right now, I see advantages both ways. I am curious about so many things I won’t have time to try, so maybe I’ll try them when I get back, and maybe I won’t. Maybe eating meat will become a regular thing, and I won’t feel weird when I have a bowl of gyūdon there, it’ll be normal. Or maybe I will come back and decide that my principles – the ones I’ve held for 18 years – are more important than my taste buds, and now that I’m back in the land of meat analogues and gummy vitamins, I can go back to vegetarianism. I don’t know. But meanwhile, I’m enjoying this very interesting journey into the land of meat. I hear bacon is good…