And so it begins...
10 years ago, almost to this day today, the addiction began: The quest to eat the hottest food any restaurant has on their menu. On this New Years Eve in 1999, as indicated on the date stamp, my crew and I ventured to one of a select few CoCo Curry Houses on the island of Okinawa, Japan. http://www.ichibanya.co.jp/english/index.html
In the midst of Y2K shutting the world down, my only concern at the time was my body shutting down. Although CoCo's has an eating challenge, it does not involve the heat it can produce. The challenge they present involves eating 1300 grams of rice in 20 minutes http://www.flickr.com/photos/pantufla/sets/220847/ Although I never tried this, I created a challenge of my own: To eat every level of spiciness they could throw at me.
After 3 1/2 years on the island, I was able to sweat my way through many plates of the best Japanese curry I can still say, 10 years later, that I have ever had. Level 10 became a thing of the norm and my crew could never hang.
I highly recommend finding a CoCo's if you are to ever travel to Japan or Hawaii. It's a mystery to me, still, why this has not taken off in the other 49 states...
