Now why do people go through so much effort to serve a fish that is poisonous?
This one is full of poison?
Yes it's super dangerous.
Otherwise you might have to burry yourself 6 feet underground.
Hey guys and girls on Ask Japanese it's your flashy fashion reporter Cathy Cat!
And today we're not in Tokyo, we are here in Shimonoseki!
Hah!
And Shimonoseki is very proud of their pufferfish!
This time we came here to find out 10 facts about the Japanese pufferfish that you don't
know yet.
So let's go and find out!
The pufferfish license.
As you know pufferfish FUGU is served in restaurants here in Japan but they are poisonous.
TTX tetrodotoxin ... they are heavily poisonous so you need to have a license.
Only 2-3 mg of the toxin can kill a person.
And it's said to be 850 times stronger than cyanide.
So in order to serve Fugu and prepare Fugu, the blowfish, you need a license.
Now this license is actually not a national license.
But a prefectural license.
And here in Shimonoseki is the strictest level of getting the license.
So what do you need to to in order to be able to serve pufferfish?
Well, number 1 first of all you need at least three years experience of working in a restaurant
or environment that serves blowfish.
Number 2 you need to study and know exactly which part of the pufferfish are poisonous.
Of course cause you need to serve it later.
Do do your studying for that.
Number 3 you've done the thing, you worked for 3 years in the environment, you know all
the parts, that is the point when you're allowed to take a class about fugu and later on take
the official exam.
Now why do people go through so much effort to serve a fish that is poisonous?
There is one reason guys and that's because it's delicious.
The poisonous vault.
Now this blowfish looks so cute and puffy.
Cute pufferfish but he's highly poisonous.
Now what do you do with the poisonous part that you take out?
Do you just throw it in the bin?
NO!
You cannot throw it in the bin because that's super dangerous.
So, it is set by law that it has to be put in a vault with a lock on so no one can get to it.
So for example criminals can't take it to poison someone.
What are those big boxes for?
This is where we store the inedible poisonous parts of the pufferfishes.
It's like a danger trashbag.
It has a lock on it. - That is regulated by law.
Nobody is allowed to open this trash because it contains poison.
There is a specialist service that has to come every day to dispose of the toxin appropriately.
- They come daily? - EVERY day.
- Even on weekends? - On weekends too.
So this box is full with poison. - It is very dangerous.
- It's dangerous. Better not open it. - I feel the dangerous danger.
Yeah but really it is dangerous. - Wow.
More regulations around the license so right now here we are inside the factory and all
the licensed chefs are preparing the blowfish but did you know you do not have to have a
license if you don't serve it to people.
Meaning: You have to have the license if you serve it to other people but if you are doing
for yourself, you don't have to have a license.
So some older people here in Japan they fish their own blowfish and they try to prepare
it by themselves.
But of course if you prepare it by yourself it's actually super dangerous and you shouldn't
be doing it.
So for example I found out that in the recent 15 years from 2003 to 2017 seventeen people
died because they prepared it by themselves.
Eeee.
That is 1.13 people per year who usually die of the fugu poison and all those people prepared
the fish by themselves.
Under a license, no one's died so far.
So that's pretty good because you loose your license if someone should actually perish.
But if you are well prepared, you now know why people pay a little bit of extra money
for this delicacy.
There's a lot of effort that goes into it but it's worth it.
Now why is the pufferfish meat so thin?
We got special permission to look behind the scenes at a high class restaurant to find
out.
Now when you think about good things like a big steak, big stuff, why though is the
fugu in very thin, almost see-through slices?
The reason for that is no because it is so precious that you have to give little bit
by little bit.
It's actually because of the texture of the fish.
The fish itself, the fugu, the pufferfish has a real bite to it.
So it's chewy.
For example in the terms of wrestling: A tuna is a sumo wrestler, then the pufferfish is a WWE wrestler!
To match the texture of the meat of the fish we go and slice it thin and soft and therefore that makes it perfect.
Pufferfish is known to be a fish that actually has less fat and if you eat it as soon as
it's caught it doesn't actually have that much of a taste.
But after aging it for hours, the components inside the meat turn it into the perfect umami
flavor.
And the chewiness is part of the fun and taste.
Considering the licensing and similar things, I think the pufferfish can be classed as one
of the worlds most exciting and high-classed foods.
Fugu can also stand for luck and happiness.
If you think of the word FUGU it comes from "fukuramu" and they blow up right hmmm...
when they are looking for food or when someone is coming to actually attack them.
But here in Shimonoseki quite a lot of people take the FUGU and remove those little dots
that you can see there, and it becomes FUKU.
And fuku means luck.
And here is a happy and lucky fuku shrine, the Kameyama Hachimangu Shrine.
Inside the shrine they even have a massive fugu statue!
And guess what if you look closely underneath, instead of FUGU it says FUKU - luck and fortune.
The biggest pufferfish in the world, this statue here at Kameyama Hachimangu is the
biggest blowfish statue FUGUUUU.
There actually was one more before that, which was build in 1934 and it made a lot of people
happy.
The original fugu statue was a little bit smaller but unfortunately in 1944 it had to
be taken down to be recycled as metal for the war during the second world war.
Since then it's been 50 years but the people of Shimonoseki really wanted their statue
back so 50 years later, we got this one here.
So when you come to Shimonoseki you can take a very unique picture with the worlds biggest pufferfish.
What is the thing that you do every 3 to 7 seconds?
Yes, it's blinking your eyes.
But guess what the pufferfish can do it too!
Does the Karp blink?
No.
Does the Salmon blink?
No.
Does the Shark blink?
No.
But the pufferfish blinks its eyes!
How cute is that!
And to find out why he does that, there are some interesting facts we're
gonna find out now.
Let's get our questions answered by our special guest! Please say hi.
I am in charge of the pufferfish collection and my name is Tamai.
- I am looking forward to showing you around. - Me too.
How many types of pufferfish are there in the world?
Right now the world is said to have 441 types of pufferfish.
What is so cute and loved about the blowfish?
Compared to other fish, if you look at a blowfish directly, their big eyes are really cute.
And those cute eyes and their cute movement is really relaxing. Please have a look at that.
I heard they blink. Why is that so?
Sometimes water insects might come close to their eyes.
They often just rest in the sand, and insects might come in the sand. They don't like it.
So they manage to pull their eyes inwards. Pull.
They pull in their eyes and then squint their face over it.
This makes them different from other creatures. Sometimes you can see them blink.
The best pufferfish aquarium in the world.
Did you know Japan has the most aquariums in all of the world, that is because Japan
is surrounded by the ocean.
And there are many different types of aquariums to be found.
There is an aquarium that specializes in deep sea creatures, an aquarium that specializes
in sharks, but here at Kaikyokan in Shimonoseki they specialize in pufferfish.
Here at Kaikyokan in Shimonoseki they have the most pufferfish than any aquarium in the
world.
Here at Kaikyokan in Shimonoseki they have more than a hundred .... right now 199 different
types of pufferfish which makes them the aquarium that owns the most pufferfish in the whole world
Can you tell us some trivia about the pufferfish that nobody knows?
At this aquarium we have the biggest and the smallest pufferfish in the world.
I gotta see that. Can you show me?
The smallest ones are this big, very tiny fish.
They are so small. Won't they grow? - That's already adult size.
The one on the back there is fully grown.
They won't get any bigger.
You have probably already seen the biggest pufferfish.
I wanna see it! - Want to see it, let's go this way.
This one here is the world's biggest.
What... What is this?! A "Mambo" (ocean sunfish)?!
WHAT THIS IS A PUFFERFISH TOO? - He belongs to the same family.
We classify pufferfish by their fins. If the top and bottom fin move like this.
All fish that move like this belong to the pufferfish family.
It is not weather they can blow up or not, it's about how they are swimming.
Mambo Mambo. (Demonstrating the fin movement here)
We got these ones here at a normal gift store.
And you can see they are dried pufferfish fins.
Pufferfish "hiresake" is said to be kind of expensive and kind of posh but!
This time I am gonna show you guys how to have it with fins that we bought earlier and
a sake that you can buy at any convenience store.
Let's go.
First of all you need to heat up the sake.
For example you can heat it up in a microwave.
If you heat it up in the microwave, 600 wats 30 seconds.
We're gonna do it a different style because we have an oven here at our hostel.
We're gonna try this differently.
Whoops.
Ok.
Our sake is getting warmer now, it's time to put our pufferfish fins on the foil and
heat it up too.
Now you can put this in an oven toaster, or you can heat it up in other ways but since
we have the chance to put these ones on... let's use this one.
It's starting to sizzle a little now, I think that's the right timing to put it into our sake.
Let's go.
Schloop.
That looks kind of pretty.
Oh it smells.
It smells of... seafood.
I thought it would be very harsh but it's actually sweet-ish.
It has the fragrance of the sea.
It's a little bit like an alcoholic pufferfish soup.
If you should get poisoned, burry your body under ground.
Looking on the internet and asking a couple of people here in Shimonoseki, there is a
belief that if you should feel the effects of the poison such as numbness or slight dizziness,
the first thing that you should do and what people apparently did is: Dig a hole in the
ground and step into it.
Now why did they do that?
The poison of the pufferfish TTX causes the muscles in the whole body to go flaccid.
And then it gets more and more harder to breathe.
That is one of the reasons people went under ground.
They believed that the soil would help the muscles in the body stay rigid and therefore
help you against the effect of the deadly poison.
Now does that work?
Now does burrying yourself in the ground up to your neck help against the blood pressure
depression all the side effects of the toxin?
Nooo it does not.
So if you should feel the effects of it, the tingling because you made your own fish and
you probably messed it up... then call the ambulance!
Don't burry yourself under ground ... otherwise you might have to burry yourself six feet under ground.
Now you know everything you need to know about the pufferfish here in Japan!
I must say when I first heard that Japanese people have pufferfish, and eat poisonous
fish, I was very shocked and surprised.
But now that I am here it's totally different of what we expect in the West.
There is so much connected to this.
The people love the pufferfish, it's a symbol of good luck, and the fish that is eaten is
prepared meticulously, people get licenses to get it done.
And no part of the pufferfish is wasted.
Also the pufferfish is adorable, people love the pufferfish, there is pufferfish displays,
pufferfish statues, so much pufferfish love, and I must say after trying it and speaking
with the people who are so proud of their local speciality - it's almost like a mascot
and symbol.
I can tell how it connects to much between food, culture, and the people of Japan, especially
Shimonoseki.
This was so much fun making this video so please please please, I want a comment of
you guys what surprised you more about the facts.
Let us know in the comments down below.
I want a comment from each and every one of you!
And don't forget to give us also a like for the hard work.
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Ok I catch you soon guys.
From Japan, this was CathyCat and I see you soon on Ask Japanese.
Bye.