Famous delicacies

There's a category of food called chinmi (珍味). The first character, by itself, means rare, curious, strange (according to Jim Breen's dictionary), and that should give you a good hint of what's on your plate.

There are chinmi for each prefecture and each region of Japan. Oddly, when I showed my wife a list of four chinmi for Shikoku, the Island where she's lived nearly all her life, she hadn't heard of any of them. I guess that's because they're not exactly the sort of food normal people eat.

• Chorogi -- the pickled tuber of the Chinese artichoke
• Katsuo no heso -- literally "bonito bellybutton"
• Shuto -- pickled bonito intestines
• Dorome -- raw, barely-dead sardine fry (just hatched baby fish)

I've had dorome. The best thing I can say for it was that it was easier to get down than raw baby octopus -- but not much. I think (I've had chorogi, but under a different name a local dialect name, I guess).

There are also three great chinmi for Japan.

• Pickled sea urchin roe
• Pickled mullet roe
• Pickled sea urchin guts

Now, these are all pickled, and all (I think) salt pickled. In other words, you rub salt all around the the "food" and let it sit for days, weeks, or months. What you get is a a sort of semi-fermented, salty mess. I think you can guess who would eat one of these by noting that, in the description of the dish, there's always the annotation, "Usually served with sake." A LOT of sake.