My 1st overseas assignment was to an aircraft carrier currently on duty in Yokosuka, Japan. While travelling to my duty station, I met some other young men who also were just reporting for duty on the same ship. When the 5 of us arrived in Japan, our new duty station was temporarily out to sea so we checked into temporary quarters and travelled off base pulling our 1st liberty in a foreign port.  Walking around town, we got hungry so we thought we would adventurous and decided to try some Japanese food in a Japanese restaurant. Unfortunately the menu was also totally written in Kanji (Japanese script) which we didn’t understand so we would point to something on the menu and the waiter would tell us in Japanese the word we pointed to but without a description of the item.

Coming from Southern California when we got to the word Tako, I thought we hit the jackpot.  I convinced my shipmates we could certainly eat Mexican tacos so I ordered 5 “tacos”, one for each of us. After hearing our order the waiter looked at me like I had just fallen off a train as he held up 5 fingers with the question Tako?  Yes I answered, 5 tacos, as I tried to indicate one for each of us when he left to prepare our meal.

A short time later he returned with a big tray but much to our surprise it didn’t hold 5 plates with a Mexican taco on each plate but centered in the middle of each plate was a large 8 legged octopus.  At that point we quickly learned the Japanese word Tako meant octopus which of course, my shipmates never let me forget.

–Thomas Orred