Being a reckless youth, I sometimes find occasion to get irresponsible with my gastro-intestinal system (remind me to tell you about the time I ended up eating frog eyes). Hence why I decided during yesterday’s morning commute to counter the heat by stopping in the refrigerated section of my local Asian foods market and picking four random items to eat at lunch, the more exotic looking the better. I later tokenizedenlisted the help of SW’s resident Asiannightlife writer, Erika Hobart. We consumed. Then I got sick. She, being already hungover from the previous night’s misadventures, got sicker. This could not have ended any other way. 1) Up first: a coconut-flavored mixture of yogurt, water, milk so sweet my jaw shivered at the first bite, and then again when I took a second. It crumbled into tiny bits of gelatin that lingered in the teeth, unwanted. The label on the packaging was absent a proper name. After ingesting a couple of spoonfulls, I no longer cared to know. Hobart’s take: “Eww.”2) Daifuku Red Bean Cake: A gelatin rice cake covered with a black sesame seeds that added nothing save for traction. The cake itself was light like mochi ice cream, and the red-bean center was sweet without being cloying. Hobart’s take: “Meh.”3) Special Hopia Ube (Purple Yam): I’m not exactly sure why this item needed to be refrigerated, or if this particular shade of purple exists in nature, but the taste wasn’t half bad. The biscuit was appropriately flaky. The yam center, surprisingly chalky. Hobart informed that “chalky” is how yam’s actually taste, as opposed to sweet potatoes which are moist. An ignorant southerner, I’d apparently been using the words “yam” and “sweet potato” interchangeably. Up is down. Black is white. I’m still reeling. Hobart, for her part, was again unimpressed: “That looks like purple poo.”4) Chin Chin’s Grass Jelly Drink: According to Hobart, “Chin Chin” is actually Japanese slang for penis. The nutritional information on the can is written in French, so it’s probably safe to assume that this fact is lost on the owners. Still, duly noted. As for the actual taste, the gelatin mixed in with the liquid (juice?) tasted just as advertised, which is to say that it was pleasant. There’s an essence of honey that provides balance, but it arrives only after the grass flavor has made a home on your tongue. Said Hobart after a spit-take: “Oh my God, that tastes like dirt.” The last broke the camel’s back, and Hobart retreated to the bathroom. I soldiered on, taking second and third helpings of each. Again, reckless.