Sorry, Shamu.

Yo Japan, you know I love you but you drive me crazy sometimes.

Will you please explain to me how, up here in my mountain town in my tiny local izakaya bar that only seats like 7 people, a bunch of whale chunks ended up in my miso soup last night?

How's that whale research program going?

Perhaps what I unknowingly ate was from one of the 1,238 whales taken under your scientific research permit last year.


The Japanese claim that whaling should continue because it is an important part of Japanese traditional culture (and it's tasty, they say), and that criticism is hypocritical coming from anti-whaling nations like the U.S. who allow subsistence-based traditional whaling in small Native populations.

Obviously there's a difference between a small isolated group of Inuits legally taking 5 whales a year, and a country like Japan who is taking 1,000 whales under a dishonest research permit loophole. Groups like the Inuit take pride out of communally hunting the local whales themselves, and using the whale amongst their own local population. Certain parts of the whale are given to elders of a certain rank and used for special ceremonies. And maybe is what whaling was in Japan long ago. But there is no tradition in the modern Japanese way of using commercial vessels to hunt whales 5,000 miles away, only to use commercial distributors to scatter whale throughout the country at high prices until it ends up in school children's lunches in the form of minced whale burgers, or in my miso soup at the izakaya last night.

But at least they're not wasting anything. As the old Japanese proverb goes, "There's nothing to throw away from a whale except its voice."