It's enough to make members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society choke on their tofu burgers. Stocks of frozen whale meat in Japan have reached 4,000 tons — that's 4 million kg.

Let's assume that 100 grams is a reasonable meal-size portion. That means there are about 40 million portions of whale meat being expensively stored under refrigeration ready for eating.

But not enough people eat kujira (whale), and far from dwindling, Japan's whale mountain is growing. It's just not popular enough as a food.