As a fishkeeper, one of the fish I wanted to see in Japan was Fugu. Fugu is is the Japanese word for pufferfish and the dish prepared from it. It’s also called Blowfish. This is a marine pufferfish, unlike most tropical freshwater puffers that are kept in the UK like the Green Pufferish, Tetraodon nigroviridis or Giant freshwater Pufferfish, Tetraodon mbu.
Giant Freshwater Puffer - Tetraodon mbu
Green Pufferfish - Tetraodon nigroviridis
Fugu can be lethally poisonous due to its tetrodotoxin; therefore, it must be carefully prepared to remove toxic parts and to avoid contaminating the meat. The restaurant preparation of fugu is strictly controlled by law in Japan, and the chefs are licensed, and only licensed chefs who have qualified through rigorous training are allowed to deal with the fish. Experienced fugu chefs in the most expensive of restaurants sometimes leave enough poison in the flesh of the fish to give diners a little numbness around the lips!
Here’s a quick clip of a tank full of Fugu destined for the table, that I filmed in a resturant display window in Asakusa, Tokyo, Japan (22 March 2011).
![[Valid RSS]](http://andysworld.org.uk/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")