Ah Fugu!

I'm just trudging through this week on auto-pilot, so I figure what better time than now to post a pic of a big tank of fugu (pufferfish) my friend Paul and I came across last year in front of a restaurant near Shibuya. We were walking back to the train station after dinner at an Ethiopian place. You got to love the ethnic diversity of food you can find in Tokyo - incredible! Anyway, as you may well know, fugu contains the very deadly tetrodotoxin in a gland near its liver. Only specialized chefs trained in filleting this fish are legally licensed to prepare and serve it. They have to cut the fish so as not to rupture that gland and contaminate the rest of the meat. About a dozen or so people die per year in Japan from improperly prepared fugu. Though it's exotic, it's actually not that great. The meat is bland and rubbery, even as sashimi. I think it's just the danger that attracts people to it. I've had it a handful of times, including one time when I went deep sea fishing with a bunch of people from work. One of them was a dental assistant whose husband is a big-time fisherman who knew how to fillet it. Somebody caught one during our trip and he cut it up at the dock. We all kind of looked at each like a bunch of kids double-dog daring each other. Then like a bunch of lemmings, we all ate some, trusting this guy's knife skills. Nothing happened, obviously, but one of our co-workers kept insisting that his mouth felt numb and tingly! Maybe he was kidding, but everyone else was getting kind of wigged out. If you have the means, try it one time - but be sure your chef knows what he's doing! Death by paralysis of your breathing muscles can't be fun.