Another fun thing that I encountered when I was in Japan was that I got to eat eel for the first time in my life. It was delicious. I had grilled eel served to me on top of a mound of rice, and it was absolutely scrumptious. Eel, I understand, is the most expensive fish that is consumed in Japan. The price depends on whether you’re eating a baby eel or an adult eel. And the price depends on whether you are talking about the wholesale price or the retail price. But, retail, it can cost between ten and twenty dollars a pound in Japan.
I also ate blowfish in the same restaurant where I ate eel. Blowfish has to be prepared by a highly trained chef. Because blowfish contains a sac of poison. If you eat that sac, you’re gonna die. So, the chef has to know how to remove that sac from the body of the blowfish without spilling the contents of the sac all over the fish which would make it inedible. So lic- um, restaurants that serve blowfish have to be licensed to sell it and serve it, and they have to have a chef on hand licensed to prepare the blowfish for consumption. The blowfish were also absolutely delicious. And I can understand why a Japanese person would risk his or her life in order to eat a blowfish.