Strangely shaped daikon sets off Twitter storm in Japan

Daikon, or radish, is one of the seemingly plain but important ingredients in Japanese cuisine. It’s often grated to use as tempura condiment, shredded to use as sashimi garnishes, or cut into chunks for oden (a type of Japanese hotpot dish). However, Japanese Twitter user @KfTzR_Towser recently harvested a radish so peculiar that it was difficult to decide what to do with it.

https://twitter.com/KfTzR_Towser/status/1334124515266228224

The two-legged radish came with an appendage that looks awkwardly similar to the male sex organ. The irony is that the word daikon, which literally means “big root”, has a sexual connotation too.

Usually, when Japanese prepare radish for use in cooking, they would use a paring knife to peel it. But this strangely-shaped radish made it difficult to even decide whether you should cut with a pair of scissors or simply slice off with the knife. Either way, it just looks weird and wrong.

Towser even revealed that the manly radish has a second appendage clasped between its two legs!

After much deliberation, Towser trimmed the protrusion away and shredded the rest of the radish body.

As for the sad-looking growth that remained, Towser said that there was no way to cook it deliciously, and decided to use it as fertiliser.

Interestingly, Towser’s tweet about the unusual radish has set online discussion ablaze with more than 11,000 retweets and at least 37,000 likes. Apart from being amused by its odd shape, some even shared their own bizarre vegetables as well, like this inverted mushroom.

Or this radish with a longer protuberance complete with arms, which Towser admitted his radish had lost to.

Apparently, there is also a feminine-looking radish.

And one with beautifully long, slender legs.

After seeing all these weird-looking radishes, it is going to take a while to get rid of the strange impression when visiting a Japanese restaurant.

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