Takeo Koizumi, a Tokyo University of Agriculture professor and a gastronome, broke into a broad smile as he nibbled on slices of fish caught in Tokyo Bay and said they increased his thirst for sake.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>The end of the hot summer is when mackerel and goby are at their fattest in Tokyo Bay, where seawater contamination from industrial and household effluents has believed to have decreased in recent years.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>The bay environment is better now than the days when pollution was at its worst during the peak of the nation's high economic growth the 1960s.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>Young full-time fishermen come to seize such species as whiting, sea bass, conger eel, 'shako' –
, "karei" (sole) and "asari" (littleneck clam).
Koizumi and his friends held a party in late September at an "izakaya" pub in Tokyo's Fukagawa district, drinking sake and dining on marinated whiting, sea bass and goby from the bay.
"Almost all the ingredients except for 'maguro' (bluefin tuna) are available" in Tokyo Bay, said the owner of a sushi restaurant in the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo.
He and the others at the party are part of a panel headed by Koizumi.