31. ONCE UPON A TIME IN SHIMONOSEKI

I’ll admit I was a little nervous when I left Fukuoka that fateful morning. For all the absurd misinformation bandied about, people have died, and still do, from eating the object of my quest that day, fugu, and there genuinely was a slight chance that I might never return from my trip to taste the world’s most notorious fish dish (although, admittedly, my inability to decode a Japanese bus timetable would be a more likely hindrance).

The fugu is a type of puffer fish, or blowfish; actually, several types of similar-looking blowfish are served as fugu in Japan, but all contain varying levels of poison. Their ovaries, liver, and the layer of fat beneath their skin hold a deadly neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin, which is thirteen times more poisonous than arsenic. Each fish contains enough to kill thirty people, particularly in the summer, when they are at their most potent. If you are unlucky enough to ingest too much fugu liver (kimo), the first sign will be a dry mouth. Difficulty breathing might follow, then you will start to lose focus. There is no antidote, although some people do survive. Others have died painful and horrible, paralyzed deaths, eventually through asphyxiation. Captain James Cook, discoverer of Australia, once had a lucky escape from eating fugu, but the famous kabuki actor Mitsugoro Bando was not so lucky. In 1975, he unwisely requested several servings of kimo and died as a result; the chef who served him went on to serve an eight-year prison sentence. The emperor of Japan is forbidden to ever eat fugu.

Though they are starting to breed nonpoisonous fugu, most are still toxic, and I had read that around six or seven people die from eating wrongly prepared fugu in Japan each year. Many dozens more have lucky escapes and pull through after intensive care (if you make it through the first twenty-four hours on life support, you ought to be in the clear), and all this despite tight regulations concerning who can prepare the fish. You need a special fugu license, which takes two or three years to earn, to serve it in a restaurant. These days, following some unfortunate incidents with restaurant-bin foragers, chefs must store all the poisonous parts in a locked box. Civilians can buy a fugu to cook at home only if it has been prepared properly, with the risky bits removed; the majority of the deaths are of people who catch the fish themselves and try to prepare them at home, or from thrill seekers who want to feel their tongues go numb or even experience a temporary coma. But still, some deaths are genuine accidents from fish prepared by professionals in restaurants. In January 2009, seven diners in a restaurant in Yamagata Prefecture fell ill after eating fugu sashimi and testes prepared by an unlicensed chef. One of them, a sixty-eight-year-old man, died almost immediately; the rest experienced numbness and tingling in their hands and legs for some days afterward.

(I think it is worth pausing here to revisit the famous Simpsons episode in which Homer eats some fugu prepared by an apprentice chef at the new local Japanese restaurant, the Happy Sumo, and is told by Dr. Hibbert that he has twenty-four hours to live. In fact, he survives. Marge realizes he is alive the next morning because his drool is still warm. Homer vows to cherish life in the future by eating diet pork rinds instead of full-fat and then watches some bowling on television.)

The acknowledged fugu capital of Japan is the harbor town of Shimonoseki, two hours north of Fukuoka, beside the Kanmon Straits, a narrow stretch of turbulent water that separates Kyushu from the next island to the east, Honshu. I could have eaten fugu virtually anywhere in Japan—you see the fish swimming in tanks in the windows of specialist restaurants in most Japanese cities—but I had heard that the best fugu chefs and the freshest fish were to be found here. More fugu are caught and processed in this small city than anywhere else in Japan, a total of three thousand tons a year, over half the annual haul. Some come from fugu farms; some are caught wild. I figured that if anyone was likely to be a safe bet to prepare me a safe piece of fugu sashimi, it was the fugumongers of Shimonoseki.

Fukuoka’s bus terminal is on the third floor of a gargantuan shopping mall, which caught me out. In the end, to catch my bus I had to run for a prolonged period, something I hadn’t done for some years, including up two flights of steps. Remarkably, there was none of the usual lung burn or dizziness I usually experience on the rare occasion I have to run for something. It did sap my energy for the next couple of hours, but at least I wasn’t the hospital case I might have been some months earlier. Could my Japanese diet of the last two months really be making me healthier?

The bus terminal was clean, quiet, and ordered. Each bus stop was attended by a conductor in a gray polyester uniform who went out of his way to tour the hall rounding up passengers so that they didn’t miss their ride. Several conductors politely rebuffed my insistent advances to board what I thought were the buses to Shimonoseki, but weren’t. Eventually, like a fly repeatedly battering a windowpane, I gave up and sat down. Some minutes later, one of the conductors came and found me and helped me onto the correct bus, his white gloves gently shepherding me on board without ever actually making contact.

Its fugu riches do not appear to have bestowed great prosperity on the town of Shimonoseki, that much was apparent within moments of arriving. It has a weary, run-down look with rusty prefabricated buildings, stained concrete walls, overgrown vegetation, and a general air of neglect. But Shimonoseki is still proud of its claim to fame, which it pronounces “foo-koo.” The manhole covers are embossed with a cartoon fugu fish, I noticed, and the seats in the local buses had been upholstered with fugu-print cloth. The shops were full of cuddly fugu, fugu key rings, mugs, and the fugu-themed mobile phone chains. Down by the harbor, in a prominent place where you might have expected to see a statue of a local dignitary or literary hero, I passed a large bronze fugu, instantly recognizable by its pursed lips and rounded boxy shape. I noticed a crowd of people. Getting closer, I realized they were gathered around a giant inflatable fugu. It turned out that, by serendipitous coincidence, I had chosen to visit the town on the day of its annual fugu festival.

As kids bounced happily outside, inside the market a large crowd had gathered around a fish tank. I squeezed my way to the front to find several children dangling fishing lines trying to catch one of about two dozen fugu swimming despondently around the tank. Anyone could have a go for ¥2,000 ($16). The unfortunate fish, about the size of a house brick, were being pulled from the water with hooks through their skins or eyes or tails—any method seemed fair game for the young crowd, egged on by their parents.

I noticed that the fish, once caught, were being whisked away, still alive, somewhere backstage by the market staff. After looking around to make sure no one was watching, I followed one of them. Here, in scenes that would make Sweeney Todd’s head swim, they were being dispatched and prepared to be sent back out to the customers in plastic bags. I watched, mesmerized by the slaughter unfolding before me as four men stood around their metal workstation in blood-and-guts-spattered aprons and white gloves. I had wondered whether fugu had spines like other types of puffer fish, but as this would probably have been as appropriate a time as any to deploy them—what with their faces being sliced off and their innards being ripped out and everything—I concluded that they have none.

I am not especially squeamish when it comes to working with whole animal or fish carcasses, but I must admit to some queasiness as I watched the fishermen hold each wriggling fish on the chopping board in front of them, before stunning them with a swift blow of the knife handle to the back of the head. Next they chopped off their faces and fins—the latter set aside to be fried and served in warm sake as a snack—and pulled off their skin in one swift movement. The fish were still gasping for oxygen at this point, their tongues bulging from the newly created orifice in the front of their head, their gills ballooning. And they were still moving as the fishermen plunged their fingers inside them and pulled out their toxic guts, tossing them into a bucket on the floor. Finally, the eyes were gouged out and the rest of the fish chopped into large pieces, its hollow carcass included, before being bagged and sent back out to the customer. I timed it: the whole thing took just thirty seconds—not quite the level of meticulous care one might wish for in the preparation of a deadly fish, but I am sure they knew what they were doing.

I stepped closer, smiling at the men. They smiled back, apparently untroubled by having a witness to all this. I pointed at the bucket of innards. I wanted to make sure it was the poisonous stuff. I had an idea, a really, really stupid thought that had popped into my head just at that moment, circumventing all common sense: I was going to try to taste the liver. There was no risk, surely, from the merest fingertip touch. After all, until it became illegal, people did actually used to eat small amounts. It is said to induce a pleasurably tingling, numb sensation on the tongue.

I pointed at the bucket; I mimed choking to death with my hands around my neck, my tongue sticking out, and my eyes rolling; and finished with questioning upturned palms. They nodded. It was indeed a bucket of fugu toxin.

I loitered for a few moments more as the filleters returned to their work, then knelt down next to the bucket to tie my shoelace. But just as I was stretching out toward the bucket, one of the filleters spotted me and waggled his finger. I pulled my hand back and smiled sheepishly; he returned to his fish, and I immediately shot my hand back out, touched a piece of liver, and quickly licked my finger.

I stood up, feigning innocence. Almost immediately, the room began to go all swimmy. My vision went slightly foggy and speckled. I started to panic. What had I done? How stupid can one man be? Was my tongue that dry before? This was it: the cramps would be next, and soon I would be a writhing, frothing heap on the floor, one more notch on the fugu’s kill chart. But the sensation stopped almost as quickly as it had started. I was fine. Panic over. It was getting up so quickly that had made me dizzy, not the liver. I neither felt nor tasted anything on my tongue. Maybe it wasn’t even the liver I had touched. I’ll never know.

Back in the market, I began my search for breakfast. A drum troupe was entertaining the crowds. Plates of fugu sashimi—each wafer-thin, transparent slice arranged in a petal around the plate in a style called fugusashi—were fetching from ¥1,000 to ¥20,000 ($9 to $18) depending on size. I bought a small plate and took it outside onto the boardwalk, where more crowds were gathering for their own al fresco breakfast, taking in the views across the roiling currents in the harbor and to the mighty suspension bridge above.

Fugu was never really going to be able to live up to its reputation, and I have to say it was an anticlimax—chewy with a watery flavor, a little bit squid-y, a little bit bream-y. No wonder they slather it with chili sauce and ponzu.

Deep-fried cubes of fugu were a different matter altogether—crisp, meaty, moist, and delicious. I used to think that halibut was the perfect fish for battering and deep-frying, but fugu is the best. Its robust texture and meaty flavor hold up especially well to the batter, keeping its shape but turning tender in the heat of the oil.

Still famished, I started a tour of the astonishing sushi stalls, about a dozen in all, each selling a fantastic array of sushi, all super fresh, expertly made, and, in some cases, of varieties I had never seen before. Most was about ¥100 (under a dollar) per piece. It was among the best sushi I would eat in Japan—the scallops fat, fresh, and creamy sweet, the tuna nigiri topped with huge tongues of red flesh. I ate so many pieces I began to get stomach pains. In the end, my own greed had succeeded where the deadly fugu had not.