Chef holding a blowfish, which is poisonous unless prepared correctly. Photograph: Sinopix/Rex
* * * * Blowfish testicles poison seven in Japanese restaurant Police question chef after unlicensed restaurant serves up deadly delicacy guardian.co.uk
Seven diners in northern Japan fell ill and three were still in hospital today after eating blowfish testicles prepared in a restaurant not authorised to serve the poisonous delicacy.
The owner of the restaurant in Tsuruoka city, who is also the chef, had no licence to serve blowfish and was being questioned on suspicion of professional negligence, police official Yoshihito Iwase said.
Iwase said the seven men ordered sashimi and grilled blowfish testicles at the restaurant last night.
Shortly after, they developed limb paralysis and breathing trouble and started to lose consciousness – typical signs of blowfish poisoning – and were rushed to a hospital for treatment.
A 68-year-old diner was in a critical condition with respiratory failure and two others, aged 55 and 69, were in serious condition, Iwase said.
"It's scary. If you go to a decent-looking restaurant that serves fugu, you would assume a cook has a proper fugu license," Iwase said, using the Japanese term for blowfish.
Blowfish poison, called tetrodotoxin, is nearly 100 times more poisonous than potassium cyanide, according to the Ishikawa health service association. Eating it can cause death within an hour and a half.
Three people died and 44 others became ill from blowfish poisoning in Japan in 2007 – most of them after catching the fish and cooking it at home, according to the health ministry.
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I Would Like to Eat Fugu -- But Live
David Kirby Moderation Kills (Excusez-Moi, Je Suis Sick As A Dog) I'm tackling this particularly chewy piece of sushi and recalling the only Japanese words I know, "Fugu wa kuitashii, inochi wa oshishii, " meaning, "I would like to eat fugu -- but live!" which, i've read, is something Japanese executives say when contemplating a particularly risky course of action, because whereas the testes of the fugu or blowfish are harmless yet highty prized as a virility builder, the liver, which is almost identical in appearance to the testes, is toxic, so that a less-cautious individual, a fisherman, say, who thinks himself as skillful as a chef who has actually been educated and licensed in the preparation of fugu, might eat the wrong organ and die, face-down in his rice bowl, chopsticks nipping spasmodically at the air. Coming in from the vegetable patch, the fisherman's wife sees him cooling in the remains of his meal and shrieks, and I don't know the Japanese for this, "You have eaten fugu -- and died!" True, though for anyone other than the new widow, why should his death be exclaimed upon as though it were a failure or defeat, since the fisherman had finished a good day of work and was not only enjoying his tasty snack but also looking forward to the enhancement of his powers of generation, this being therefore a fine moment in which to expire and certainly preferable to countless moments of life as a fumbling drooler (since fugu liver can paralyze as well), a burden to his loved ones as well as the object of their contempt. Then someone across the table from me says he's heard of a state of mind called boredom but never actually experienced it, and I wonder, Can a mind that never sinks into the cold gray waters of boredom ever rise to the blue-and-gold heavens of ecstasy? Then someone else shouts, "Excusez-moi, je suis sick as a dog!" and disappears laughing, but that's okay, because "ecstasy" = "ex stasis" = "get off the dime" = "fish or cut bait" = "lead, follow, or get out of the way," does it not? Besides, who's to say the fisherman didn't hate his wife, couldn't stand her? And had to eat fugu testes in order to be able to countenance her and therefore is better off dead and unknowing than alive and fully sentient of such misery? Or hated himself and therefore is better off dead, etc.? And therefore who is more admirable, the executive who fears death or the fisherman who actually dies? Does the former feel brave merely because he has talked of taking a risk? Would the doughty fisherman have said "Fugu wa kuitashii, inochi wa oshishii" and taken pride in his temperance? Certainly not -- offered the same challenge under identical circumstances, he'd have said, and I don't know the Japanese for this either, "Moderation kills." ** {From Poetry 180 Intro by Billy Collins}
