Fugu Me

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DAY 337: One thing I never expected this Blog to do is actually have influence on the course of The Trip; usually a travel Blog is just a report on stuff that happens without ever actually being a part of the story that it is telling.  Of all the incredible things The Blog has done for me, one was introduce me to new people, faithful readers of my (mis)adventures.  (At the time of writing, I believe there are more readers that I’ve never met than people I know—and even more if more of you SBRs would speak up!)

One of these unknown Blogreaders—neigh, Blog Hogs—was Liz, who opted to be on “The Trinidad Show” by inviting me to her home in Japan, a country I always wanted to go but wouldn’t unless I had a place to crash since it’s so expensive.  Liz, a Canadian ex-pat from Windsor, Ontario provided me that place to crash in her humble apartment in central Tokyo, which she shared with her Japanese husband Hiroshi.  She told me to come on over so she could play host for me—she even had episodes of The Amazing Race saved up for me to watch.  She also entertained my idea that one night we’d go out for fugu, the poisonous blowfish immortalized in an episode of The Simpsons, a food that could kill you if not cut and prepared properly due to its inherent natural presence of tetrodotoxin.  (There is a 50% fatality rate according to an FDA report.  Some regard eating fugu as playing the culinary equivalent of Russian Roulette.)

THE DAY STARTED AT MY ROOM TO CRASH not in Tokyo, but 1800 miles away in Hong Kong.  I said my goodbyes to Aviva and Moe and head off to the Hong Kong airport before Moe even left for work.  The Airport Express train took me to the airport on Lantau Island and soon I was high above Hong Kong bound for my next destination.  I flew to Tokyo via Taipei on Cathay Pacific, which entertained me with a whole bunch of in-flight movies to choose from, from Ghostbusters, Van Helsing and Shrek 2. 

Immigration formalities were easier than I thought; I had no address to write down on my entry form (and no guidebook to provide me with one), but the immigration officer didn’t seem to care as long as I wrote down Liz’s phone number.  The only worry I had during my official entry into Japan was holding in my sneezes; with the fear of the spread of SARS, all the Asian airports have been on full alert for suspiciously sick people.  In fact, you must declare if you have a fever or diarrhea at one of the checkpoints. 

Can you imagine what an interview would be like with a border health official if you declared diarrhea?

Government Health Official (with clipboard in hand): Okay, Number One… Actually, Number Two. Ha ha, get it?
Traveler with Diarrhea (holding it in): Just ask me the goddam question… Grrrr… Uh… Ohhh…
Government Health Official: What countries have you visited in the past fourteen days?
Traveler with Diarrhea (still holding it in to the point of grunting): Uh… Oh… Aaah --China-- OH… Can I please go to the toilet now?
Government Health Official (calmly): When we’re done.
Traveler: Oh… Oh… Oh God… Nooo.... (farting noise) Uh, too late.

A train took me from Narita Airport to Tokyo Station in Central Tokyo.  Out the window I saw that Tokyo’s suburbs were perhaps more familiar than I thought they’d be, with stores like The Sports Authority and Toys “R” Us whizzing by.  I arrived in central Tokyo about an hour later and it too was a familiar scene, a big modern city—but hardly “generic” being arguably the most modern city in the world.  Technology was used every which way for the convenience of Man—that is, if you knew Japanese.  It took me a while to figure out the pay phone/calling card system, but eventually managed to call up Liz’s mobile phone without any major faux pas.

“Hey Liz, I’m here by the turnstiles at the Yaesu Exit,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

Liz and I found each other almost immediately and she was the great host and guide she promised to be from the get go.  She taught me how to use the above-ground train debit card system and took us to her stop not too far away.  On the way we zipped by different neighborhoods, each one looking just as flashy as the previous with the neon lights of advertising billboards, restaurants, arcades, karaoke bars and Pachinko parlors.

“Before we go to the bank we have to go to the supermarket,” Liz said.  I put my bag on a shopping cart and we zig-zagged through the aisles of Japanese goods.  “If you see anything you like, just put it in the cart and I’ll pay for it,” Liz said.  Wow, how’s that for hospitality? I thought.  We filled a cart up with assorted Japanese goodies—chocolate and cookie “Pocky” sticks and seaweed flavored potato chips to name a few—and then walked over to the local Citibank for me to get some cash.  Two more blocks of walking passed restaurants, a five-story karaoke house, a couple of 7-Elevens and a Denny’s family restaurant, we arrived at Liz’s apartment complex on a smaller, quieter street away from the Tokyo neon.  Her husband Hiroshi was away at his mother’s to handle some private family matters, leaving the apartment for just me, Liz and those episodes of The Amazing Race that she saved for me.

“What should we do for dinner?” Liz asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “It doesn’t matter, I’m not picky.”

“Well, I can cook or we can go out for fugu,” Liz suggested.  In her five years in Japan she hadn’t tried fugu either—which was probably why she lasted those five years.

Wow, fugu so soon? I thought.  I just got here. But it didn’t take me that long to make up my mind.  “Fugu me,” I said in the immortal words of Homer Simpson (before he later thought he was going to die).  Whether or not I’d end up dead or in a hospital (or in an interview with a witty Government Health Official), I didn’t know yet.  Perhaps my first day in Tokyo would be my last.

AS WE WAITED FOR THE FIRST COURSE of our ultimate fugu meal set to arrive at the table in the Genpin Fugu restaurant down the block, I noticed another thing about the Japanese.  They don’t say yes, they shout it.  The Japanese word for “yes” is “hai,” but no one pronounces it “hai.” No, they shout “hai!” and it sounds like they are either:  A) about to attack you with a samurai sword; or B) choking on a chicken bone.  The phrasebooks and translation dictionaries really need to add the exclamation point at the end.  When the word is said in the middle of a sentence, all of a sudden the tone of voice gets louder for that one syllable.  “[Something something something] HAI! [something something] HAI! [something something something] HAI! [something.]”

It probably gets confusing for a man dying from fugu poisoning to tell someone he is in pain:

Maitre d’: Hello there, how is everything?  Ah, sir, I see that you have selected the fugu.  Fine choice.
Patron (gasping for air): HAI!
Maitre d’: Oh, wonderful, wonderful.  I’m glad you are enjoying it--
Patron (feeling the poison spread through his arteries): HAI!
Maitre d’: --because our usual chef called in sick and we had to have his roommate Sato prepare it, even though he hadn’t really done it before in his life.
Patron (starting to feel paralysis in his legs): HAI!
Maitre d’: You seem a little flustered sir, would you like me to get you some water?
Patron (starting to go blind): HAI!
Maitre d’: Okay, just a-- what the...?  Wait a minute, are you choking on a chicken bone?

Patron falls to the floor, producing the sound effect you hear when Charlie Brown falls after missing kicking the football.

Our fugu dinner set was prepared not by an amateur, but by a chef who went to school specifically to master the preparation of fugu without killing anyone—or so I hoped.  The chef prepared the fish in every which way a poisonous blowfish could, each style with a unique taste:  cut up in slices as fugu sashimi (tastes like yellowtail); cut up in pieces to be placed in a boiling hot pot of fugu broth with tofu and Japanese vegetables (tastes like squid); and breaded and fried as fugu katsu (tastes like chicken).  Some of the raw pieces (picture above) were so freshly cut from the fish that they were still twitching and “breathing” (that’s not a joke) while some pieces (the fins) were broiled and placed in my fugu-flavored hot sake. 

Each bite was a test of bravery, that game of Culinary Russian Roulette, but for some reason I just had good faith in the restaurant since it did nothing but specialize in fugu preparation.  Besides, fugu tasted good.  Funny, I don’t feel like I’m about to die, I thought to myself.  If the chef did call in sick only to have his inexperienced roommate to prepare it, I didn’t want to know.

In the end, neither Liz or I died that night, which was a good thing because I had all those episodes of The Amazing Race to watch.


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This blog entry about the events of Monday, September 20, 2004 was originally posted on September 27, 2004 on the blog, "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World (Or Until Money Runs Out, Whichever Comes First)," hosted by BootsnAll.com. It is one of over 500 entries that chronicled a trip around the world from October 2003 to March 2005, encompassing travel through thirty-seven countries in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. It was this blog that "started it all," where Erik evolved and honed his style of travel blogging. (It starts to come into focus around the time he arrives in Africa.)

Praised and recommended by USA Today, RickSteves.com, and readers of BootsnAll and Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree, The Global Trip blog was selected by the editors of PC Magazine for the "Top 100 Sites You Didn't Know You Couldn't Live Without" (in the travel category) in 2005.





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