Live from Kobe... it's the Quiz of the Week!

Your chance to win a bottle of sake! All you have to do is guess what this is - snapped while wandering around Kitano. First correct answer (not from Japan) wins a bottle of Kobe's famous rice-based brew.

And the correct answer - mailed in by Mr Huckfield in Coventry - is that the somewhat grotesque tableau above is composed of the drying fins of the blowfish, also known as the puffer fish, but known around these parts as the fugu (literally 'river pig'). Although the fugu itself is already something of a delicacy, apparently the Japanese also like to lightly toast the fins and infuse them in hot sake.

The fugu is a deeply unattractive fish, although much more famous for its amazing toxicity. Its organs are loaded with a neuro-toxin over a thousand times deadlier than cyanide, and the little fellow is thought to be responsible for around 100 deaths a year in Japan, although admittedly these tend to be in rural backwaters.

It is alleged that the same toxin present in the fugu is the main ingredient in voodoo zombie potions, something given credence by reports that in certain regions of Japan people leave the body of a fugu eater lying beside his own coffin for three days before burying it. If the body doesn't decompose, it isn't dead.

Chefs have to be specially trained and licensed to prepare and cook fugu. There is a written and practical test; apparently only a quarter of applicants pass the written test, and the practical test includes eating the fish that has been prepared. Perhaps not surprisingly, I couldn't find any statistics on how many fail that practical test.