Bizarre Foods
The mamushi viper are used to make an alcoholic medicinal beverage.
An imori no kuroyaki or "blackened broiled Japanese Fire Belly Newt has popularly been ascribed aphrodisiac properties, though this animal has been found to contain tetrodotoxin, the deadly fugu poison. On a related note, certain beetles of the Spanish fly family are used in Traditional Chinese medicine but are toxic, and in ninja fiction, the beetle's poison has been portrayed as being used in assassinations.
Use of not just raw, but living animals might be considered a novel use of ingredients: shirouwo (Ice goby) and hotaruika (Sparkling enope squid) are swallowed while still alive and wiggling (this is called odori-gui(ja)).
Read more about this topic: List Of Japanese Ingredients, Animal Sources
Famous quotes containing the words bizarre and/or foods:
“Deafness produces bizarre effects, reversing the natural order of things; the interchange of letters is the conversation of the deaf, and the only link with society. I would be in despair, for instance, over seeing you speak, but, instead, I am only too happy to hear you write.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“There are many of us who cannot but feel dismal about the future of various cultures. Often it is hard not to agree that we are becoming culinary nitwits, dependent upon fast foods and mass kitchens and megavitamins for our basically rotten nourishment.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)