#SASHIMI FUGU SKIN#
#SASHIMI FUGU FULL#

“Trust the Russians to use something no one’s ever heard of.”) As recounted in Tom Parker Bowles’s 2006 travelogue, “ The Year of Eating Dangerously: A Global Adventure in Search of Culinary Extremes,” the real-life British explorer Captain James Cook had a more direct encounter with the fish in 1774 while trawling the South Pacific, sampling the liver and roe of a recent catch and then waking in the middle of the night to a violent prickling and sense of disembodiment in which “a quart pot full of water and a feather was the same in my hand,” for which only “a vomit and after that a sweat” offered reprieve.Īlmost everything written about fugu in the West, including the previous two paragraphs, revolves around the potential for death. No,” published the following year, it’s determined that the mysterious substance was “fugu poison.” (“Taken us three months,” the doctor reports. James Bond nearly dies of it at the end of Ian Fleming’s 1957 novel “ From Russia With Love,” when it’s administered by a kick from a boot with a hidden blade and he crumples to the floor in “ Dr. Just two or three milligrams of TTX may be lethal to a human - “more potent than arsenic, cyanide or even anthrax,” the American science writer Christie Wilcox notes in “ Venomous: How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry” (2016). In high enough doses, this can shut down a diner’s nerve impulses and cause, within hours, nausea, paralysis and the stalling of the heart, which only knows to beat because our body’s electrical system tells it to. Among those who think of fugu as merely a distant delicacy, knowledge rarely goes beyond the fish’s infamous trait: In the most delicious species, the innards are suffused with the neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin (TTX).

A sluggish swimmer, fugu has stunted fins and often flat-lying spikes instead of scales, and when confronted by predators it compensates for its lack of speed by swallowing enough water to swell up until its spikes stand on end, so it looks like an angry armored balloon. Westerners have never quite understood the reverence in Japan for fugu, alternately known in English as puffer fish, globefish or blowfish, of the family Tetraodontidae. To one diner, this is a promise of pleasure to another, a teetering on the abyss. HERE IS A PLATE of fish cut so thin you can half see through it, the pale panels arrayed in rings that ripple outward, like the small, concentrically packed florets of a chrysanthemum. For more information, visit our website at. Osaka is included in a number of our tours including our Best of Japan and Best of Western Japan tours. Prices at the Zuboraya range from 1,000 Yen for a plate of fugu sashimi, up to 8,400 Yen for an elaborate set meal serving the entire fish.

#SASHIMI FUGU SKIN#

For example, fugu skin is used as a sashimi, fugu fins are served in sake, and they even serve fugu ice cream. The flesh of the fugu is normally served as sashimi. The restaurants can be identified by the large, distinctive fugu found hanging in front of their restaurants as can be seen in thephoto from the Shinsekai district of Osaka. One of the most popular fugu restaurants in Osaka is Zuboraya, a small restaurant chain found in the South Osaka area (Dotombori, Namba, Shinsekai). During the Edo Period, many Kabuki actors died from eating fugu because only wealthy people were able to afford fugu at that time. The analogy here is that eating fugu is like playing with a gun. In Osaka, fugu is also called “tessa”, which in Osaka dialect also means “gun”. It is “Honey is sweet but the bee stings”. There is a Japanese idiom that fits in this situation. In spite of the fact that chefs who prepare fugu must be licensed by the government, people die every year from eating fugu. While the entire fish contains small amounts of poison, the ovaries from the female fugu and the liver from the male fugu contain large amounts of neuro-toxins and must be removed prior to consumption. But it is estimated that 70% of all the fugu eaten in Japan is consumed in Osaka.įugu sounds like “fuku” which means “happiness” or “good luck”, and is an auspicious fish even though they are poisonous. Most of the fugu in Japan is caught in the Shimonoseki area (the water between the main island of Honshu and the southern island of Kyushu).

Another specialty of Osaka, especially in winter is the poisonous fugu (pufferfish). Osaka is said to be a ‘Gourmet Paradise’ for the Japanese and is famous for its specialties such as Okonomiyaki (savory pancakes), Takoyaki (octopus dumplings) and noodles.

Sashimi fugu