Osaka's Dōtonbori district is a Disneyland of food, where the restaurant signage includes a giant mechanical crab, a blowfish the size of a hot air balloon and a giant squid that puffs steam.
Unrepentant troublemakers in small Haitian villages were sometimes dealt with by a shaman, who would prepare a powder from the skin of a blowfish mixed with ground glass.
His prey bounces to the microphone, rocks on his heels, makes blowfish faces from the wings, calls his staff "High Prophet" and "Turd Blossom".
The puffer, which is also called swellfish, or blowfish, is any member of a group of about 90 species of fishes of the family Tetraodontidae, noted for their ability when disturbed to inflate themselves so greatly with air and water that they become globular in form.
Even those with toxic properties, such as certain blowfish, can be prepared so as to circumvent harm to the consumer.
It's ugly, expensive and poisonous enough to induce respiratory paralysis and death, but the blowfish has long been one of the more desirable items on Japanese seafood menus.
Spanish fly, cobra blood, Japanese blowfish and baboon urine have all been ingested in the hopes of a good time around the world.
He said his reaction was like that of "a porcupine or a blowfish when they're angry".
Japanese Blowfish There are many words in the Japanese language to describe the distinctive texture of this prized culinary delicacy.
Now in a move that has sent some blowfish restaurants into toxic shock, Tokyo's government says it is deregulating the trade, allowing the fish to be sold in premises without a licensed chef.
We sat in little booths and ate blowfish and then did karaoke afterwards.
