Dicing with death

I read on The Age website last night about a recent spike in people getting poisoned after eating fugu (japanese puffer fish). Apparently a dodgy restaurant was serving up the delicacy without preparing it properly. Made me think back to the time our family went to visit my sister in Japan who was working there at the time. We went to a market place and ordered fugu sashimi from a street vendor. Everyone was a bit reticent to try it but we survived the experience (frankly, I thought it was a little overrated...quite tasteless). We subsequently got to sample it a second time in a restaurant (deep fried). Nothing. No tingling of the lips. No heart palpatations. No seizures. I though the whole 'toxic thing' was blown out of proportion; an exaggeration. We even saw fugu for sale in a supermarket in Japan. Now surely, if it takes years of training to prepare, they couldn't possibly be offering it as standard supermarket fare (I imagined meek japanese housewives expertly carving away the poisonous organs before serving fugu to their families). But last night, I read a somewhat unsettling statistic ... every year, 3 people, on average, still die from eating fugu. Sure, it's not a huge number (more people die from alcohol-related incidents) but it does make you wonder.

In case anyone is curious, this is the proper way to prepare it...