長文の訳お願いします(*_*)
The eel is truly an mysterious fish.
As is well known, young eels return
from the sea to grow big in rivers.
What no one knows is where they are
born or from where they travel to Japan. They seem to come from the deep sea teaches around the Philippines, but this is not known for certain. Thus, we can't catch a lot of young eels, and there is also a natural limit on our ability to farm eels. We have finally learned how to make mature eels lay eggs, but
as we do not know what young eels eat, we cannot raise them from birth. In other words, eels cannot be farmed from birth through to maturity.
Today, there's some disagreement between eel chefs and sushi chefs. At eel restaurants, they will serve a strip of white meat about 5 cm long and call it baby eel. Sushi restaurants, on the other hand, deny that it is eel;they say it is baby conger or sea snake. It is hard to imagine it is baby eel, because baby eel is hard to come by in quantity. Anyway, no matter who is right, baby eels are a mystery to eel lovers.
What is also strange is that although Japanese waters should be a fine breeding ground for eels, young eels are hardly ever found. On the other hand, there are countries such as Spain which have an abundance of young eels. A favorite Spanish dish is to take heaps of European baby eels seasoned with olive oil and garlic, and then cook them in clay pots. There are probably more baby eels on each plate than a Japanese will eat in a lifetime. Another strange thing is that, half a world away from
Spain in Venezuela, baby eels are eaten the same way. It helps to know that Venezuela is by far the
wealthiest nation in the region, and frozen baby eels are flown in from Spain. Of course, Venezuela was
originally conquered by Spain in the Age of Discovery, and the privileged classes of Spanish ancestry still uphold a "Spanish diet."
Europeans enjoy eating not only baby eels, but eels in many ways. The north German city of Hamburg is known for its varied gourmet cuisine, and its eel soup with fruit is very unusual. Smoked eel is commonly eaten in Europe in soup or sauteed. And remember, it's bad manners to slurp your eel soup.
There is a poem in Manyoshu that goes:"Won't you have some eel? It keeps you strong in summer." The benefits of eating eel to prevent exhaustion in summer were well known in those times, which indicates just how ancient our history of eel-eating is. The Japanese have always had great faith in the benefits of eating dark-col-healthy. That is why catfish was popular. Among the varieties of dark meat, eel is
especially delicious. In the Edo Period, eels that came up from Tokyo Bay into the Fuka and Kanda Rivers were considered the finest, while those found elsewhere were
considered less flavorful. It's hard to imagine that the flavor of the former would be different from eel caught locally.
Anyway, oddly enough, there are two big misunderstandings about eel among Japanese people. The first is that eel is a specialty of Japan. When you understand how highly valued eel is in Europe, you might eat it more often. The second is that some people hate eel, associating its shape with snakes, even though they have never tried it. If they could get rid of that senseless association, many more people would try eel.
