I am now so used to natto that I I am jaded to its visage.  Does one more photo of natto evoke its stickiness further? Just like 3 days of hiking through primeval forests, no thank you, I have ceased to care about epic, thousand year old trees covered in moss. They are common place now.  And natto slime is no different.

The final full week of natto consumption (can you believe it’s been nearly a month already?) yielded a few interesting discoveries.  Chief among them is that natto is among the “Swiss Army Knife” categorization of foodstuffs. Not in that it can be prepared in so many ways, or that it contains a corkscrew, but in that it is just so useful at so many times of the day.

Natto is Awesome at the Following Times:

It’s great in the morning, when you have zero time because you were up too late watching South Korea/America/Mexico/England, or any of the other soccer teams you care about fail to succeed. You can make it in seconds, and it’s got good staying power combined with a piece of fruit or something, so you don’t start feeling hungry again until right around noon.

It’s wonderful when you get home from work, and have an awkward little window where normally I would either end up eating dinner early either because I spent the day throwing little kids around and have worked up an appetite. Or more likely it’s because of prolonged exposure to an island on which half the population is has cleared the half-century mark, which means I am basically a senior citizen by osmosis, and thus my body recognizes that 4:30 is the perfect time to have dinner. Natto to the rescue.  A pack of natto is only about 40 grams of food, which is enough to fill the void until I can eat at a reasonable time, rather than hate myself at around 9:30 when I got hungry again on an earlier schedule.

Natto is also nice for a little something pre-workout if I’m feeling a little draggy. If I only eat a banana or something I die about half way through, but with some protein mixed in (and all the natto slime superpowers) I can keep genki-ly throwing my ball of metal with a handle on it around well into the evening.

Natto is Incredibly NOT Awesome at the Following Times:

Natto is the last thing you should ever try to eat if you’ve got any kind of nausea.  Even though I’m used to the stuff, there is nothing like slimy beans to really bring that feeling of nausea to the forefront.  Unless you find slimy things soothing for some reason, probably best not to test this one.  I have already thrown myself in front of the bullet of progress for you on this one, and you may consider yourself honored to know such a hero and patriot, one that would suffer so that you need not.

I also find that post-workout natto loses some of it’s appeal for some reason. I think the general loss of appetite that comes with working hard + aforementioned slimy oddness is just enough to remove it as a viable post-workout protein source.  Go eat a dead animal, or some other form of legume instead.

Home Stretch

I’m almost done with 30 days, as of today I should be at 28ish, minus the one off day.  I’m calling it mission success this Wednesday, and I’ll be back some time this week for my final thoughts on the whole gruesome experiment.

I’ve got some other things in the works right now which I started about a week ago which I should also be going live with some time soon, so keep your ears pricked and your eyes glossy and any other marginally old-timey body-alertness related metaphors you can think of.  I’m going to go watch Japan decide whether my tomorrow is full of bright, perky, patriotic co-workers, or bitter, angry, sarcastic hate-balls.  たのしみ～(/^ ^)/|  o |