Teacher, writer, performer and Mum, Wendy Horikoshi has lived, breathed and worked in Japan for a little over 13 years. Taking a left turn from tarting up medical journals and wedding speeches, she takes a look at the Kawaii culture that envelopes Japan.

If it isn’t Kawaii in Japan, it just doesn’t rate a mention.

With Hello Kitty everything, bank cards, bentos (lunch boxes), and dish sponges in the shape of characters and cake, you can’t escape the cute.

Now, I am not really a Kitty fan. Little white cat, with no mouth? Needs everything to be twee and adorable? Nah. Then along came my babies. Two hard core Kitty fans, both boys, with kitty spoons, socks, toothbrushes, pyjama’s and kitty dinner sets, my house is overtaken with cute. I am drowning in pink and white bows, little hearts and sparkle on everything.

Before I was somebody’s Mum, I was in a punk band, with black nails, purple hair, and many, many piercings. Cute just isn’t my cup of tea.

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Fugu, the Japanese word for pufferfish, blowfish, balloonfish, globefish or swellfish, is one of the world’s most poisonous fish. The kanji characters used to write fugu 「河豚」 literally translate as “river pig”. The fish is a delicacy in Japan and has been consumed by the Japanese for centuries.

Image source: Just Hungry

Fugu flesh is edible, but the skin, liver and ovaries contain lethal amounts of the poison tetrododoxin. If any of these elements are consumed, then the poison paralyzes the muscles while the victim stays fully conscious, and eventually dies from asphyxiation.

The trick to surviving a fugu meal is to make sure that it is prepared correctly. All traces of the internal organs must be removed from the fish’s flesh, that is why restaurants can only serve fugu if it is prepared by a fully qualified fugu chef.

Because the Japanese have been eating fugu for so long, they have devised many methods of cooking the deadly fish. The most common ways of preparing fugu are as a thinly-sliced sashimi, simmered in vegetables (known as techiri), or deep fried as kara-age. The skin can be served in a salad, and the fins of the fish are also commonly removed, battered, fried and served in sake.

So, if you enjoy playing Russian roulette, chow down on a Filet-O-Fugu today.

If you think that this is weird then check out 10 Weird Japanese Foods for more bizarre morsels of Japanese culinary strangeness such as raw horse meat, aquatic insects, grasshoppers, bee larvae and more. If you are not that adventurous, then check out 10 Cool Japanese Foods for a delicious selection of Japanese fare.

Each year McDonald’s in Japan releases a popular limited time menu item, the Tsukimi Burger (月見バーガー, literally moon-viewing burger), available only during Autumn. The Tsukimi Burger is a hamburger that contains a poached egg with the yolk representing the moon on an egg white sky, a hamburger patty, bacon and a special teriyaki-like sauce. The year 2010 marks the 20th year anniversary of this seasonal specialty burger.

This article is a submission for the Japan Blog Matsuri hosted by Surviving in Japan with the theme “Fall is the season for eating (食欲の秋)”.

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