Eating Japan Part 11 – Catching a Fish and Eating it Alive

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At posh restaurants (but not in Japan) the waiter will sometimes come round with a tray of live lobsters asking you to choose one.  I’ve always suspected that this is a con, as you’ve no way of knowing whether the lobster which they bring you cooked is the one which you chose. There are no suspicions of this kind at the boat restaurant in Fukuoka, where you catch the fish yourself and you can watch it being cut up for you before being served raw to your table.  It’s a favourite restaurant for children.  The picture shows Max and his sister Maia, the children of my friends Phil and Yoko, gleefully celebrating a good catch which we later ate.  The children were asked if they wanted the fish cooked, but insisted that we had it raw.
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This restaurant is more expensive than most – it cost £44 each, including booze, but for that you get a good deal of entertainment.  The video below shows one of the chefs demonstrating how to take a largish fish and slice it into sashimi, without killing the fish first. It needs a firm hand to turn a fish into fillets while it’s squirming beneath the knife.