our first japanese eggplant! bugs got into the end near the stem because the vegetable was buried in the wood chips, but the rest of it was perfect and tasty. i did a coarse chop that i learned from blue apron and sauteed it in EVOO for 3-5 minutes. then i mixed it with lots of other veggies and put all of them over tamaki gold rice. best. dinner. ever. (mostly because of the rice. even n/naka uses tamaki gold.)