Eddie Does Japan

I love tuna. The fattier the tuna the better. And of all the members of this great family of beasts that roam the oceans, none is more prized than the great bluefin tuna. sometimes referred to by its Japanese name, maguro (鮪) or if you want to get all scientific, Thunnus thynnus.

One of the highlights of my time here in Japan was a party I was invited to last year where a young maguro bull was given to my friend Mitsuhiro’s family by a fisherman to celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of Mitsuhiro’s family’s restaurant. I, along with twenty-five or so other people spent a good four or five hours gorging ourselves on tuna. There were beautiful, almost translucent pieces of sashimi cut from the fatty belly, called toro (とろ) in Japanese. There was also chÅ«toro (中とろ), well marbled flesh from the center of the belly, and otoro (大とろ), literally great toro, which is probably one of the fattiest, most melts-on-your-tongue animal products this side of foie gras. Chewing otoro is optional, it just kind of disappears in your mouth. There was also tuna sushi, of course, and a riff on on shabu-shabu made from the leaner cuts of fish. The head of the fish had been seasoned with salt and slowly baked for hours allowing the excess fat to render out and the skin to crisp, resulting in all kinds of savory goodness (see photo below) . I was even tricked into trying to eat one of the fish’s eyeballs, which turned out to be as hard as a jawbreaker and totally inedible, not to mention gross.

Of course all of this gluttony is not without a downside. Last week the New York Times revealed that methylmercury levels in bluefin tuna sushi at a handful New York City restaurants and grocery stores exceeded the FDA’s recommended limit of 1 part per million. The chief of Japan’s Fisheries Agency, Teruo Tagaki, responded by stating that “The [New York Times] is exaggerating the risk“. After doing some independent research (here, here and here) I am inclined to agree with him (this despite the fact that his agency oversees Japan’s “scientific” whaling operation which is a notorious front for commercial whaling).

Health risks aside, the real issue with eating bluefin tuna is the impact it has on the environment. Since the 1970s the bluefin tuna population has decreased by ninety percent. As someone who grew up in one of those big rectangular states in in the center of America, I didn’t used spend a lot of time thinking about the ocean. Now, living on a tiny spec of an island off the southern coast of Japan, I find myself surrounded by it. The more time I spend at the beach, the more I realize how poorly we have treated our oceans. Some areas are teeming with garbage while others are literally dying. As Michael Ruhlman put it, “I didn’t eat a piece of fish that hadn’t been breaded and then frozen until I was an adult. Now I want to eat fish but I have to check the little chart of good-fish bad-fish my 8-year-old brought home from the zoo last weekend. What to do?” I’m not sure what the answer to that question is, but as someone who both loves eating and loves the ocean, I hope someone comes up with a good one soon.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Food, Tanegashima. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.