This week's episode of The Sporkful podcast is up! Listen through the player or iTunes/Podcasts app. (And please subscribe!)

As he made his way through the aisles of unfamiliar foods in a grocery store in rural Japan, Glynn Washington noticed a group of older women following him.

"I don't know what anything is. I grab a box of crackers, and [one of the women] starts shouting at me," Glynn recalls.

Glynn didn't speak enough Japanese (yet) to understand what the woman was saying -- until she pointed at his box of crackers:

"There's a picture of a dog," he recalls. "And I realize, 'Oh this is dog food.'"

In this episode of The Sporkful taped live at the 2016 Taste of Chicago, the Snap Judgment host and acclaimed storyteller shares some his favorite food stories -- from his childhood in a religious cult in rural Michigan to his travels in Japan and India later in life.

Listen in to the full episode to hear how that encounter in a rural Japanese grocery store made Glynn a tea drinker for life.

And from rural Michigan to rural Japan, Glynn tells us why he prefers to be a "fish out of water."

This week's episode of The Sporkful podcast is up! Listen through the player or iTunes/Podcasts app. (And please subscribe!)

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Interstitial music in this episode by Black Label Music:

- "Oakland" by Justin Asher

- "Hip Hop Slidester" by Steve Pierson

- "Sun So Sunny" by Calvin Dashielle

- "New Old" by JT Bates

Photos: Will Urbina and courtesy of Snap Judgment