By David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 30, 2006; P01
Death on a plate arrives in so many shapes and textures and pretty arrangements that for a moment I forget this meal can kill me.
But soon my mind snaps back to attention. On the second floor of the Tokyo restaurant Tentake, I inspect a marinated lump of fish topped with a hot pepper-radish sauce, grab it with my chopsticks and, with a quick internal prayer and my mother's pleading admonitions in my ear, take my life in my hands. I have a bite . . .
* * *
Ah, wondrous, dangerous, insidious blowfish.
The name alone strikes fear into Americans, and for good reason. Blowfish contains tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin that shuts down electrical signaling in nerves and kills within hours. But to the Japanese, blowfish, known here as fugu, is a culinary delicacy, a pricey meal to be enjoyed during special occasions -- say a goodbye party for a friend or an outing with coworkers.
I first ate fugu during a year teaching English in Hiroshima, when I was invited to a teachers' party. My Jewish mother, when I told her of the pending outing, begged me over the phone not to attend. "Can't you just sit there and, uh, watch ?" she asked.
By the time I arrived at the hotel, most of my fellow teachers were already tipsy on sake and beer and, when I voiced objections to eating fugu, they looked at me with a mix of scorn and pity. With a strange lightheadedness, I sat down and proceeded to sample one dish after another. Fugu wasn't the main course, it was the only course: raw, boiled, fried, marinated.
To the relief of my mother, but perhaps not my students, I survived -- and vowed to someday try fugu again, when I would be less afraid and more able to appreciate the flavor.
Tokyo has by some accounts between 700 and 800 certified blowfish restaurants, and I don't use the word "certified" lightly. At Tentake, one needed look no further than the walls to see framed certificates for eight chefs who had passed a rigorous licensing exam to prepare and serve the fugu courses.
A few days before my meal, I was permitted as a journalist to observe a training seminar at Tokyo's famed Tsukiji fish market for apprentice chefs learning to dissect the fish and remove the poison, carefully discarding the remains in special bags that are sent to a central incinerator.
The fugu house is a nondescript white building deep in the bowels of the market. A red-lettered sign on the door warns of the danger inside.
Upon entering, you are surrounded by knives -- and poison. A dozen young apprentices dressed in white smocks and hats are learning to dissect the fugu under the attentive gaze of a half dozen middle-aged instructors. Two health inspectors observe silently from one corner. In another, fugu wholesalers association union director Katsuhiko Iizuka, 75, a good-humored man with thick dock-worker hands, sits on a stool smoking Caster cigarettes.
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.
"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.
I take my first bite. Fugu is a white fish, dense and substantial. As I chew, I think about the poison and the risk. But then I notice: Fugu, ironically, has a reputation as bland-tasting, and in this incarnation, I must admit, it tastes almost like chicken. It's not the fish but the hot pepper sauce that bites, creating a stinging sensation on the tongue.
There's little time to ruminate. Out from the kitchen, in quick succession, come: raw fugu, cut so thin as to be transparent in color; slightly pan-seared fugu whose edges are dark but inside is raw, atop a salad of lettuce, corn, daikon and carrot; and fried fugu, served hot with the bone inside and garnished with paprika and a slice of lemon.
The raw fugu is a bit too rubbery for my taste, but the fried dish is flaky with a nice crunch, perhaps the most friendly to American lips reared on fried chicken, shrimp or oysters.
As we eat, Iizuka entertains us with stories, from his days helping at his parents' fish shop in Tokyo's Nakano district to more recent mornings on the Tsukiji dock inspecting fish and selling them at auction. Even now, he starts his days at 3 a.m., as the dawn's first catch makes its way to market.
Fugu season is winter, but even at this summer dinner the dishes keep coming. With a wink, Iizuka even orders us fugu sake -- in which hot sake is poured into a cup containing the fin and tail, then set on fire for a few seconds to burn off a touch of the alcohol. The taste is remarkable, a bit salty but easily more flavorful than a typical rice wine.
For the final course, the waitress places a hot pot in front of us and hands us a plate of raw fugu, tofu and vegetables that we dip into the boiling water briefly with chopsticks. This is known as shabu-shabu , and if you don't finish everything, don't fear: The rest of the broth is sopped up with rice, topped with a runny egg and served as a stomach-bursting risotto-like finale.
Near the end of the meal, the chef, Tsutomu Matsui, wearing a chef's hat imprinted with fugu drawings, joins us. An instructor at the fugu house at Tsukiji market, Matsui is less talkative than Iizuka but has a devilish sense of humor.
Surveying the empty plates, I sit back in my chair and, with my return trip to Washington set for the following morning, announce: "This is a great last meal for me."
To which Matsui responds: "It might really be the last meal for you. The last supper."
Tentake (6-16-6 Tsukiji Chuo-Ku, Tokyo, 011-81-3- 3541-3881) is a seven-minute walk from Tsukiji station, on the Hibiya subway line. The set course meals are $38.50, $55.50 and $115 per person.
David Nakamura covers D.C. government issues for The Post's Metro section and travels to Japan as often as he can, primarily to eat.