Dolphin steak, anyone?

As Monday 12th February was a ‘Substitute Holiday’ for the whole of Japan, I was able to escape Osaka for the weekend and get into the wilds of Totsukawa in southern Nara. After an hour and a half train ride, my friend picked us up for the two hour car ride through wiggly roads to her home in the mountains.

Despite forecasts of heavy rain, it was a warm and sunny spring-like weekend. We walked the mountains by day and bathed in the river onsen of Kawa-yu by night.

One afternoon we drove down to Hongu in Wakayama prefecture, walking in the forests and hills before dark.

Heading to an onsen on the way back we stopped off at a small supermarket on the mountain road to stock up on chocolate and drinks.. I was browsing the fish section, which was varied, despite the remote location of the shop, when I saw the tell-tale deep red bloody flesh of what I thought must be kujira or whale.


Looking closer, I could see that the skin attached to the fish was like a silvery-blue plastic rind.

“Er, that’s not whale..” said my friend, “That's iruka, dolphin”. I was stunned. The Japanese hunt and eat dolphin ? For 464 yen, we could a slice of arguably one of the most intelligent animals in the world.



On my return to Osaka, the Japanese I spoke to about the dolphin meat were genuinely shocked and surprised. Eating dolphin meat doesn't seem to be a speciality, at least not in the Kansai. It's decreased in popularity since dolphin meat is reported to have dangerously high levels of mercury, cadmium and pesticides such as DDT.

Searching on the web this week, I found a few articles on the BBC website about the traditional hunting and killing of around 3,000 dolphins each year at Taiji in Wakayama prefecture, a seaside resort just a short drive from Hongu.

Ric O'Barry, an American marine mammal specialist with One Voice tells the BBC's Paul Kenyon about the dolphin killing which takes place between October and March every year :

"The fishermen surround a pod of dolphins at sea. They lower metal poles into the water and bang them with hammers.

The clattering noise carries through the water, and confuses the dolphins' sonar. In their panic, the dolphins are driven into shallow water. Then the killing begins.

There is little finesse about it. The water runs red, as the fishermen use knives and ropes to capture them and hoist their thrashing bodies onto the quayside.

From there, they are dragged, many still alive, to the slaughter house, chunks of flesh ripping from them onto the tarmac."

Paul Kenyon looks deeper into the 'cultural gulf' between Japan and the Western world :

".. the dolphin hunters surprised me. They were not the callous animal rights abusers I had been led to expect. They were dignified and philosophical about their trade. They were also confused. Dolphins to them are just big fish to be treated like any other. "You'd think nothing of slicing off a tuna's head while it was alive, so why the outcry over dolphins?" one of them said. That night, in the dolphin bar, I showed them a BBC film about the latest research on dolphin intelligence. I wanted to understand the cultural gulf dividing Japan and the rest of the world. They sat in silence, watching bottle-nose dolphins master up to 60 words of sign language and demonstrate some pretty mind-blowing problem-solving skills. They were not impressed. "They're just like dogs," said one. "You could teach dogs the same tricks; it doesn't mean they're clever."

Read the whole BBC article here.

Save the Taiji Dolphin Campaign's website claims that the aquarium industry is encouraging the killing of dolphins by paying huge amounts of money for live dolphins :

"the international aquarium industry subsidizes these massacres by paying upwards of US$45,000 for prime live specimens for aquariums, dolphin-shows and swim-with-dolphins programs. A dead dolphin sells for about US$600 on the market for meat."

BBC - Dining with the Dolphin Hunters
Japan Times interview with Ric O'Barry, campaigner with One Voice
Save Taiji Dolphins Campaign
One Voice

Wisdom food

I had my wisdom teeth out on Valentine’s Day. I made my first visit to a Japanese dentist and before you could say ‘double extraction’ he’d whipped them out. All my usual feelings of fear and helplessness when visiting the dentist were accentuated by the language barrier, for although the dentist spoke near-perfect English his two female dental assistants didn’t speak a word. So, he’d leave me alone with these two impossibly beautiful, clinical girls who didn’t look a day over 16 to poke and prod and drill into my teeth and the fear would come like a freezing tide from my feet to my head. I must admit I’d watched Marathon Man only the week before and had horrific visions of dental torture in the forefront of my mind. Anyway, they’re out now and it wasn’t so bad really.

So I can’t chew any food, which leaves me reduced to the prospect of baby food-like stuff to eat for the next week until my gums are healed. And actually, I’ve been discovering lots of yummy ways to eat mush.

Here are a few of my faves from the last few days, these recipes are simple to make, healthy and great anytime:

Breakfast and snack meals

Tofu soymilk graintastic breakfast drink

Cook some quinoa and amaranth in a pot of boiling water until the tails of the quinoa have unfurled themselves and the amaranth looks like little shiny pearls.

Drain the grains and add to a blender. Add some silken tofu (‘nama tofu’ in Japan), soymilk and a dollop of maple syrup.

Whizz together and enjoy.

Grainy Banana milkshake

Cook some quinoa in a pot of boiling water until the tails of the quinoa have unfurled themselves.

Strain and add to blender with some milk and a banana.

Add honey or maple syrup to taste (The banana is quite sweet so you may not need a sweetener at all).

Blend and pour into a glass. I love this one !

- Benefits of quinoa : high protein content, high in calcium, good source of iron, phosphorous, B vitamins and vitamin E.

- Benefits of amaranth : high in protein, fibre, amino acids, vitamin C and calcium.

Meals

Flaked salmon on a bed of spinach with mashed potatoes

Cook and mash the potatoes, adding a little salt, olive oil and milk.

Place salmon en papillote in some aluminium foil with a sliver of butter. Place in oven or under the grill for 15 – 20 minutes.

Wash spinach and place in a pot with a little boiling water. Let it cook lightly, until soft, then add to a blender with a drop of sesame oil, a little soy sauce, a crushed garlic clove and some sesame seeds. Blend the mixture until it's a shining green paste.

Make a bed of mashed potato, top with the emerald paste and flake salmon on top.

This is fantastic !

- Spinach builds the blood and stops bleeding, quenches thirst, it is “rich iron and chlorophyll content (which) builds blood” (Healing with whole foods, Paul Pitchford).

Good old English leek and potato soup

Chop an onion. Chop leeks and potatoes into chunks. Cook the onions in a little olive oil until translucent, lower heat, add leeks and potatoes, cover for a few minutes for the vegetables to sweat it out in the pot. Add some vegetable stock, salt and pepper, a bayleaf and some crushed garlic along with lots of water. Cook for 45 minutes until its all lovely and mushy. Blend together, allow to cool and little and eat !