11mo ago

10-year-old girl in Japan becomes youngest person certified to prepare poisonous pufferfish — a delicacy that can be deadly

www.cbsnews.com

A Japanese 10-year-old has become the youngest person authorized to prepare "fugu" pufferfish — a delicacy that can kill if its poisonous parts are not properly removed.

Fifth grader Karin Tabira passed a test this summer that means she is now certified to slice and gut the fish for consumption.

She recently used her new skills to serve a platter of paper-thin slices of fugu sashimi to the governor of southern Kumamoto region where she lives.

62 comments

"Would you like some of this delicios puffer fish? It could very possibly kill you."
"No."
"What if I told you it was also super expensive?"
"NO!"
"What if I told you it was prepared by a 10-year-old?"
"NO!"
- Sounds similar to people trying to get me into alcohol, never liked it much, but everyone always keeps pushing it as if I need to "learn" to drink it.
  Fucking no. It's disgusting. I like my occasional light alcohol drink but I ain't chug down litres and piss it, and my money, away because it's "cool".
  
  I'm fine with some alcohol, but some people are like that specifically with beer with me.
  I just don't care for it. I keep getting the "you just haven't had the right kind of beer!" line and then I try their suggested beer and I do not like it.
  Some people can't accept that you just don't like the taste of something they enjoy. But it happens in weird ways. No one tells me I just haven't had the right banana yet when I tell them I don't like bananas.
  
  Millennial here.
  I read zoomers are less likely to use peer pressure to get others to drink. It's also the reason why so many non-alcoholic beers are out in the market now. Really cool.
  
  Different kinds of alcohol is just different flavours of hand sanitiser.
  
  People don't drink because it tastes good. People drink it because they like getting high and alcohol is one of the few legal drugs you can do. People who drink it because it's the cool thing to do are being idiots.
  If alcohol isn't your thing you should probably get out there and try other drugs. The good thing about drugs is how many different kinds there are. There really is a substance for almost everyone if you look hard enough. Now if only stuff was legalized and people didn't abuse it to the nth degree and get themselves in trouble.
  Edit: also forgot to mention that brewing is probably the easiest and cheapest way to make a psychoactive substance known to man, and is an entire hobby people (such as myself) have. While lots of homebrewers spend money on fancy equipment and ingredients you don't need to spend much at all to make alcohol that will get you drunk it can literally be done using a used plastic bottle and a fucking balloon. You can make pretty drinkable stuff with even fairly basic equipment like a hydrometer, couple of plastic or glass fermenters, yeast + nutrients ordered online, and supermarket ingredients.
Damn, they are getting younger and younger. Just recently a 13 year old drilled into a patient during brain surgery in Austria /s
- I know a 5 year old who shoved a crayon up his nose.
  
  Ah the ol' crayola oblongata
  
  You know Homer?
Oh, wow. I can't imagine having knife skills that precise. I've looked into this; what you actually need to do to prepare the fish isn't actually difficult- there are only two organs that need to be removed without puncturing them.
But you still need a steady hand and incredible precision to remove those parts 100% consistently, frankly slicing the fish into 'paper thin' sheets would be 10x more difficult- just, if you fuck up a paper thin cut then it's still fine and edible. Managing to pull off that sort of presentation technique is a really good indicator that this girl is the real deal- if she can make those paper thin slices, she can remove the poisons in her sleep.
I would love to try real sushi one day, but alas. I live in the UK. Best I can do is homemade with stuff from the supermarket.
- Thanks!
  That's exactly why I was looking at these comments.
  Sounds like it's essentially the same process you'd use for any other fish, except for the potential consequences of a mistake.
- The UK doesn't have real sushi? Like you can't even buy sushi grade fish from a local mart and try making it yourself?
Poison fish. Poison fish. Poison fish. Tasty fish!
I'm never going to try this.
Has anyone tried this? I can't imagine the taste is much better than sushi grade yellow tail.
- I tried it. It’s fish
  
  Yeah. I figured. Thanks.
- I've heard it's not the taste. It's a combination of thrill seeking and also even the meat has a bit of ttx apparently and microdosing gives a little tingle or buzz of sorts that is desirable.
  
  Yes, I've heard the same. It's a flavourless, hazardous form of conspicuous consumption. It's one of those things where if someone dies from it, it's really hard to feel sad for them.
  
  Definitely not for me. Thanks for the info.
- I've had it. I didn't go out of my way for it--it was served to me as something special.
  It doesn't taste like much. It's not bad by any means, but not very flavorful.
  
  So worse than like yellow tail.
  Yeah, I figured it.
I always wonder how many times did we try this until we found the edible bit
- It's mostly all edible, it's about not rupturing the glands that are toxic
- My guess is not many. You just need to remove organs you'd likely want to remove anyway.
- I bet it was a "i'm going to freak the hell out of my friends by eating this poisonous fish lol" moment
They've discovered that farmed puffers don't have toxic organs. The poison comes from the food they naturally ingest, so farming them on a special diet makes them safe.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/new-improved-fugu-now-without-poison-81301903/
- Where's the fun in that
  
  I want to say "live to see another day", but on retrospect, that is indeed, quite boring.
We put arbitrary age limitations on seemingly everything, from voting to watching a movie. When we have no age limits on something, stories always come up about a young kid who is capable and competent.
So why do we even have those age limits? We have adults of 30+ who are way more immature than some 12 year olds. Just seems like needless limitation on the rights of kids.
The real exception to this I suppose are things like age limits on joining the military or giving consent.
- like the dumb mfs that own cars like ford mustangs or dodge challengers and end up totaling their cars because the believed that they were the reincarnation of Ayrton Senna when in reality they can barely drive a shopping cart
- The reason is to protect the physically or mentally weak from the strong while also having rules that are easy to follow and to enforce, that don't require psyche exams, which depend on the examiner.
  Age might not be a good metric of evaluating maturity, but it is the best and most practically useful we have. (I use "maturity" here as having reached certain physically and mental level where they can operate, think and decide independent, and the risk of being manipulated is low.)
  Because age is not a good metric, that means that we have false positives and false negatives on a maturity tests based on age, which we need to balance. And I would rather have more false negatives (wrongly ascertained immaturity) than false positives (wrongly ascertained maturity).
  If someone comes up with a better and still practical maturity test, that would be interesting. "Solutions" like every citizen has to do a yearly physical and mental exam in order to keep their rights as an adult, seem much to harsh and easily manipulatable. Especially around blurry lines like disabilities.
  Wherever certain thing needs a maturity test or not and where that should be, I cannot say. Just if the age limit is too high, then mental decline will raise the false positives, which would be bad as well.
  
  I don’t think that is a fully-satisfying conclusion. If it held up to scrutiny, then we would also curtail the rights of the elderly in the same way, which in the overwhelming majority of cases we do not. We would do the same for people with relevant disabilities, which again in the majority of cases, we do not.
  If someone proposed removing the right to vote from people with mental disabilities to “protect the mentally weak from the strong”, I’d like to think that we’d all see the problems with that. Why do we not feel the same way about the disenfranchisement of younger people?
"I was happy when the governor said 'oishi',"
It's 'oishii', CBS. Just because English no longer cares about vowels doesn't mean Japanese doesn't. Oishi is proper name (big rock or little rock depending upon the kanji)
- After how Japan mangles names and words into katakana I can't get too worked up over languages without (formally transcibed) vowel length forget a macron or double letter in publications for non-speakers.
  Besides, I don't think the h thrown into Ohtani is gonna make Dodgers fans say his name any different than without it. It would be similar to trying to get a random Japanese person to use vowels outside the five sounds they have.
  
  The h in after O in names was some choice to try to denote oo or ou in japanese (long vowel for those that don't know) so at least that kinda makes sense (I'm not sure if any modern transcription system officially uses it).
  Katakana is certainly limited, but they can't just add new sounds to the language and such easily. Older speakers can't even say 'v' as in violin in most cases. Younger generations generally can (but a DVD is still a dee bui Dee or even a day bui day in some speakers).
- it didn't actually say she did that as a job. this is more like when a teenager gets their pilot licence, it sounds like. a difficult goal that they set and achieved at an early age. it's literally just a license that says she passed a test of skill.
  this isn't necessity about labor at all. it's about someone being really good at what the do. idk about you, but I'd rather still see sushi chefs that are skilled like this in a post capitalist society.
- the children yearn for the mines
I don’t doubt the ten year olds ability to prepare the fish, only the ability to understand the weight of her actions.
Yeah no thanks.
Catholic school uniform. Yes. She prepares and serves the fish while wearing one.
- The article states nothing about this and has no images implying it.
  
  It's Japan tho.

62 comments

"NO!"