Sushi Then and Now

10. The Kikkoman Soy Sauce Company was founded three centuries ago by Shige Maki and is still run by her descendants. Proper soy sauce etiquette: pour a small amount in a bowl, dip only one corner of the sushi, and consume the entire thing whole.

11. Pictured here is yellow-eyed snapper that looks like fugu (blowfish) but isn’t. A delicacy in Japan, fugu is illegal in Canada, probably because hundreds of amateur chefs die annually attempting to clean and eat the deadly fish. Fugu poison is 1,200 times more lethal than cyanide. The telltale signs you’ve ingested the poison include a tingling sensation in your toes, blue lips, paralysis, convulsions, and excruciating pain. Life expectancy is four to six hours.

12. Urban myth has it that 50,000 homes could be built annually from the amount of wood used to make disposable chopsticks in Japan.

13. Wasabi, that singeing-hot, green paste in the middle of sushi, is actually a root. The sharp taste results when the root is exposed to air. Traditionally, wasabi was cultivated in water on the shady side of mountain valleys. Most “wasabi” used today is a cheaper variation made of horseradish, dyed green.

14. A recent addition to the sushi plate, gari (pickled ginger) is meant to be eaten between mouthfuls as a palate cleanser.

15. Until the late seventies, North Americans were downright hostile to the idea of eating raw fish, and sushi chefs were forced to adapt to our meek palates. Inadvertently, this led to the most creative period in sushi history. Tojo, one of Vancouver’s top sushi chefs, was a key player in developing Westernized sushi. Among his greatest inventions is the Tojo maki, later known as the California roll (a combination of cooked crab and avocado wrapped inside-out to hide the nori). The California roll can now be ordered in Japan.

16. and 17. The shrimp-filled dynamite roll (16) and cooked salmon BC roll (17), both Tojo creations, cannot be found anywhere in Japan.