One step forward, two steps backward

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is currently in the talks of enacting a bill which would revise an existing ordinance regulating fugu (blowfish) trade in the area. Taking effect in October of this year, the bill would allow unlicensed chefs to process and sell the poisonous (on the inside, spiny and nightmare-inducing on the outside) fish.

The change in policy is prompted by the inefficacy of current license restrictions. Hironobu Kondo of the metro government’s food control department reports that a significant portion of Tokyo residents now simply buy fugu from prefectures with fewer regulations. Tokyo is among only a handful of prefectures where restrictions apply. While in recent years, safety concerns associated with fugu consumption have become less of an issue, the Tokyo Fugu Association claims that the revision of the ordinance would also result in a big drop in the overall price of fugu products. Furthermore, as license requirements are dropped and the number of restaurants selling fugu increases, it is also predicted that so will the incidence of food poisoning cases. Sometimes you just can’t win!

So, where’s the problem? Everywhere. While yes, this does mean that anyone can now slice open those monstrous fish, this is exactly what the animals want. Not only do they wound us upon capturing them, an untrained and unskilled chef can now potentially kill a lot of people, and this is now a legitimate possibility. Irony, thy name is fugu, as the Japanese have now unleashed a veritable kamikaze upon themselves.

Symbolic victories are delicious

The animal kingdom can become surprisingly powerful out of nowhere at times. Some days, you’ll experience normal sized monsters, and other days, you’ll experience abnormally large sized monsters. Especially the ocean! It’s full of gigantic beasts that are just waiting to kill us. The only thing you can do in these situations is man up and bring your hunger with you.

How about if we raise the bar a notch, and see you take on some super sushi thanks to some heroes? The video takes us to a quaint sushi restaurant in Aichi prefecture that not only serves some amazing sushi, but some Godzilla size futo maki and nigiri sushi.

When you make it that big, it doesn’t lose some of its appeal. On the contrary, it gains massive appeal (see what I did there?)! Not only that, we take out some of their greatest warriors. Delicious and beneficial: What could be better?

Sushi spicy sauce is people!

Tiny, super microscopic people. And in infinite amounts!

A woman is suing Planet Sushi, a sushi restaurant in New York City, over her take-out sushi. She feels that the spicy sauce that came along with her dish had a higher than normal amount of semen in its ingredients.

Mind you, the normal amount of semen in spicy sauce is typically zero.

She states that she noticed something amiss upon first tasting the sushi, after having dipped a piece of the tuna roll into the sauce, and that she spit part of the roll out but swallowed about half of the bite.

Now, the part about noticing something out of the ordinary regarding the sushi throws me off a bit. What does that have to do with anything? Does the sushi contain semen, or at least, more semen than what’s to be expected from fish? Is she implying that the sushi was tainted or prepared in a way that required her to use the potentially tainted spicy sauce? I don’t understand.

Nonetheless, she’s proceeded with a lawsuit, which a judge has allowed despite a request by the restaurant to be dismissed. There are so many questions that need to be answered, and not a one of them contain words I would use at my job.

If you can enforce a ban, you can enforce a quota

The International Whaling Commission (don’t let the name fool you–they’re ag’in’ whaling) is offering a truce to longtime animal warriors Japan. Instead of continuing their outright ban, which the Japanese dodge by calling their kills “science,” the IWC might permit them to limited whaling with as-of-yet undetermined quotas.

How do the Japanese justify killing the better part of 30,000 whales, the majority becoming food, since 1986 as science?

1) Food science is science. It’s science that you eat. Without out it, there would be no Twinkies, Cheez-Whiz and other “foods.” It’s only a matter of time before the Japanese discover a fish-like substance that tastes like whale.

2) Less whales equals more Japanese people. The world’s seaweed and tiny gross fish supplies are running scarce because whales eat it all. What will the Japanese eat if they can’t cut it up and tie it to rice? Spaghetti-Os?

3) The best technology comes from war. We’re at war, but the Japanese are facing a giant, intelligent foe that may use language to coordinate its underwater convoys. Therefore, any weapons they develop for whaling will lead to peacetime innovations like odorless braces and typhoon guns.

Mmmm, raw meat sitting in the sun

It’s raw, it’s meaty, it’s long and best of all it’s wrapped in seaweed.

Students at the University of California, Berkeley, rolled and then ate a 330-foot roll of sushi, breaking a previous world record set in 2001. In all, about 200 pounds of rice, 80 pounds of avocado, 80 pounds of cucumber and 180 pounds of fish were used.

Apparently oblivious to the threat posed by H1N1 and the numerous other diseases that college kids contract, hundreds of students ate the sushi afterwards. So any day now we’ll be hearing about it.