It's already over, here in Japan, but here's one final image to memorialize the day's feeding frenzy…
This is the poster put out by the national unagi association for this year's Unagi Day. The writing translates as follows…
• top right: "The landmark of good health, summer eel."
• and on the andon lamp motif: "Doyo ushi-no-hi (the midsummer Day of the Ox); July 27 (Fri.)"
I wrote a small piece that appeared on CNNGo today. It's an elegy of sorts to the eels themselves, which have been fished and eaten to the point where stocks have collapsed;
and also to the traditional neighbourhood unagiya, which are unlikely to survive very much longer in the form they have been known for the last century or more — and certainly not in the same numbers. If the rise in eel prices doesn't do for them, the lack of a younger generation of eel grillmeisters will. What young chef wants to stand over a charcoal grill all summer, in the face of fewer customers?
