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The Deadly Blowfish: Last Meal in Tokyo?
Iizuka gives me a brief overview. Aspiring chefs may train at a restaurant under a licensed chef. But to break out on their own, trainees must safely dissect a fish, labeling its edible and poisonous organs and preparing the meat and skin to meal-ready quality all within 20 minutes. Any mistakes and they are sent back to try again.
It's not easy. The most deadly organs are the female's ovaries, but the male's testicles, which look almost identical, are a delicacy.
  Blowfish expert Katsuhiko Iizuka eats his dinner -- carefully -- at Tokyo's Tentake restaurant. (By David Nakamura -- The Washington Post) |
"If you mix it up, you definitely fail the test," Iizuka tells me with a chuckle. Last year, 830 people applied for a fugu license in Tokyo, Iizuka says, but only 500 of them passed the exam.
Most fugu deaths are the result of fishermen attempting to prepare a meal themselves. Ten years ago in Japan, a doctor died after eating the liver, one of the most dangerous organs, Iizuka says.
Like most things in Japan, fugu has its requisite lore. In the late 1800s, when eating blowfish was against the law, Hirobumi Ito, the country's first prime minister, was said to have traveled to Shimonoseki, in western Japan. There was no fish available except fugu. He ate it and pronounced it delicious, declaring that Japanese should embrace the fish. Shimonoseki is now the most famous city in the world for fugu.
Standing in the damp fugu house, watching the apprentices remove the organs and place them on one of two trays -- edible and inedible -- and then attach plastic yellow identification labels to each organ, I begin to feel squeamish.
At one point, I absent-mindedly touch my index finger to my tongue -- and suddenly worry that I have poisoned myself. Later my tooth aches and I fear my mouth is in the first stages of paralysis. I depart the fugu house in late morning with a rush of adrenaline, happy to see what I saw but even happier that I've lived to tell about it.
* * *
A week later, I'm sitting with Iizuka and my friend Junya Sugawara at a table in Tentake, preparing for the moment of truth.
Iizuka has changed out of his smock and donned a pinstriped blue suit for the occasion. He's wearing an expensive-looking gold watch and his hair is slicked back. He has a deep, husky smoker's voice, but is quick to smile and has a twinkle in his eye.
Fugu is expensive, but I've asked Iizuka to take us to a moderately priced place. At Tentake, a fugu set course can range from about $40 per person to about $100. We settle on the $60 course.
There is no warm-up act for fugu. The waitress immediately delivers small bowls of boiled fugu marinated in vinegar and topped with daikon radish-hot pepper sauce, which I am instructed to dip in a mixture of Welsh green onion, seaweed and soy sauce.
