Tuna Fish Heads in the Japanese Supermarket

The other day I and my wife went to the supermarket to get some ingredients for dinner. We normally go to the ghetto grocery called "MaxValu" which I really hate. It reminds me of Wal-mart, too big, too cheap, and too many scumbags shopping there. Not to say that all people who shop at discount centers are scumbags, but when you've had a chance to visit these deep discounters often enough and you start looking around, you'll notice a certain type of people who visit there.

I hate MaxValu. I hate everything it represents, even though their prices might seem lower, I don't think so always. I mean, they can buy in bulk and shave a few yen off their prices. But overall the quality of their food sucks. It's bought in bulk and is geared at the lowest price possible.. even if that means cutting in on food quality. Their produce is awful too, but these post isn't about bashing MaxValu... at least not today.

Anyway we'd decided to go to a smaller store about 5 minutes from our house. The place was called Yamada, and it's quite a bit more refined than the communist feeling Max. So we go into this place, which reminds you of some Italian or French market. The produce is placed in wicker baskets with hay inside, the store music is soft and mellow instead of the traditional J-pop crap from other stores, as well as products that are new, fresh and of high quality than a discount chain.

So we walk around the place, from the bakery in the front, to the produce section, until we finally reach the seafood department. And I tell you, they had one hell of a spread of seafood. Red Snapper, Blue Fin Tuna, shark, salmon, salmon eggs, kingfish, yellowtail, they had it all... and it was all fresh. And then we edged around the counter to a display that nearly chocked me... I got sick just looking at it... and instead of describing it to you, I will just show you a picture, because it forced me to whip out my camera and snap one off.
As you can tell, it still had the eyeballs in it. The carcass was just sitting there in that aluminum pan... It looked like someone had pulled a "Freddy Kruger" on that fish and then set up some altar to appeal to the dead fish's soul. I am not the queasy type either, but when I was ready to eat, out shopping for my food, and then I saw this nasty display of tuna carcass sitting on the counter, it made me sick.

And I guess what really got me was the eyes. They looked glazed over like some 10 hour old donut from Mr. Donuts. The poor fish looked to be in agony despite obviously having been slaughtered earlier that day. I hate looking at the eyeballs of something that I'd eat, it gives me the willies just thinking about it.

And so we floated on by until we came to the sushi. Now I just said I was sickened by the display of that poor dead tuna fish, but that didn't stop my fancy of the hypocritical.. I decided to get some scrumptious sushi, so I picked up a fresh box of premade sushi that was sitting not more than 10 feet from that tuna fish head of doom.

It looked so good. Even the tuna made my stomach do a somersault. So I took it home along with a can of beer that I had to purchase on the way home because Yamada didn't sell beer. And I gobbeled it up like a anteater in the Amazon. It was awesome, and even the tuna melted in my mouth so much so that I forgot about the terror that the tuna head had given me only minutes earlier.