5 Scary Japanese Foods and Why You Should Try Them

I’m from Australia, where the Japanese dining landscape is mostly dried seabeds of sushi and tempura bound by rivers of teriyaki sauce.
Tsuru tsuru tororoPhoto: Audrey Foo Tororo, grated mountain yam, with rice.
Saku saku inagoInago no tsukudani are locusts boiled in soy sauce and salt or sugar.
Leggy, beady-eyed insects are visually startling but I tried some saku saku (delicate, crispy) treats in Tsumago-juku in Nagano Prefecture that were inago (grasshoppers) fried in soy sauce and sugar—and they went down surprisingly well.
What if I said it’s seminal fluid?”“No!”Don’t eat shirako to be “Japanese.” Only one out of the seven locals I asked said they like it.