Bones. If you buy meat with bones, you might consider the bones to be a waste of your money. That's understandable. You can't eat the bones, after all.Yet, when bones begin to disappear from your food life, things start to seem a little weird. You think of 'meat' as 'meat', with no concern about what it is you're eating, or where it came from (not place, but animal).My experience in Japan is that meat with bones is a rarity. Oh, you can find the odd piece of meat (chicken legs) that has bones, but by and large the bones have been removed from the meat before it is displayed.As I said earlier, you can't eat bones (well, most of us don't, usually). But bones do and can add flavour to our cooking. Plus, bones help to remind us what we are eating. We should be respectful of the animal that gave its life so that we may have nourishment. Without the bones, meat becomes food, or simply fuel.One of the foods I miss the most while living in Japan is ribs. Occasionally, I can find some ribs in our local supermarkets. Sometimes, the bones have even been left on the meat!!! More often than not, the bone has been removed. Also, sometimes when I find ribs, a package will have 2 or maybe even 3 ribs in the package! Whoo-hoo!But last weekend, we discovered at a local supermarket packages of ribs that included a whole side of (pork) ribs. The ribs were from the US, not from Japan. It's the first time in 20 years to see such a thing! Of course we bought some, because another experience I know only too well is that sometimes interesting foods will appear in supermarkets here, only to magically disappear and never again show up. When I first came to Japan, this used to happen with peanut butter. Thankfully now peanut butter regularly appears in the stores.Today, I cooked the ribs, first in the oven with a dry spice rub, and then on the BBQ. Those ribs tickled my ribs. It was a pleasure to get meat stuck between my teeth. Need I say that my family as a whole devoured the ribs?It was a good feast today and I hope I will be able to purchase ribs in the future here, but I never know if that will be the case.If only Adam's Ribs existed, and could deliver to Japan, life would be easier - as long as I remembered to order the coleslaw.Time to go - I have to clean my teeth.