With the country's catch of Pacific flying squid continuing to reach record lows, wholesale prices for the seafood have more than doubled for companies that process it into delicacies such as shiokara and what are normally inexpensive dried squid snacks. Not only has the scarcity ...
Japanese towns that thrive on once-abundant squid suffer as numbers decline at alarming rate
Takashi Odajima picked up a cracked and faded photograph and dusted it off with his sleeve. He smiled a little sadly at the image from long ago, back when he was a baby boy. In the photo, he sits on his uncle's lap as his ...
Hokkaido's Hakodate is heaven for gourmands of all stripes
Hakodate occupies a unique place on the Japanese landscape, both literally and gastronomically speaking. Facing the Tsugaru Strait from its position on the southern shores of Hokkaido's Oshima Peninsula, the city grew from a small Ainu fishing village to become, in 1854, Japan's first port ...
Kagoshima artist paints squid and eats them, too
Yuka Miyauchi is a painter, but she's not interested in landscapes. Her art is all about squid. She uses squid ink in her work, she exhibits regularly and evangelizes about the animals' beauty. And she adores them served up on a plate. Miyauchi, a 30-year-old native ...
A dead giant squid is on display at a zoo in Hokkaido, where visitors are invited both to ogle the ugly mass and to touch it. The animal is drawing crowds at Maruyama Zoo in Sapporo, where it forms part of a deep-sea exhibition that ...
