I'm Scottish and thus was brought up on entirely cooked food. Fish was bread-crumbed or battered, and was invariably cod. And deep fried. It was always fillete

I'm Scottish and thus was brought up on entirely cooked food. Fish was bread-crumbed or battered, and was invariably cod. And deep fried. It was always filleted, no bones, and was either a fully filleted piece of quality fish, or fish fingers. In fact I can't remember a time where I had to eat any kind of meat which was raw. Also, we didn't really eat any kind of shellfish - or at least, I had an aversion to shellfish ever since I was given boiled winkles (sea snails) at a young age - around 4 or 5. So I got fussy with my food - no shellfish, no "sea bugs" - prawns, lobster, whatever wasn't filleted and bread-crumbed or battered fish. You can imagine the comedy after I married a Japanese woman. The Japanese love raw fish. And me being set in my ways, and 100% stubborn, usually refused to eat raw fish. The only time I've eaten raw fish was after a good few doses of sake, when my inhibitions were lowered. Otherwise, it's a case of "Nope!" I also decided that moving to Japan was a Good Idea (we had lived in London for 12 years, which as a Scotsman I hated vehemently), and ripped our family (by then we had a son) out to Japan, where we lived and I worked for 6 years - in Koriyama city, Fukushima prefecture, until the magnitude 9 earthquake and subsequent Drama made for a less than perfect life and which was the trigger for me to drag my family over to my native Scotland where we now live, and where the ground is reassuringly Very Ancient and Doesn't Wobble So Much. So, living in Japan had plenty of comedy. There were the inevitable Family Get-Togethers, and in Japan this invariably involves copious amounts of raw fish, which, if you're me, is "Totally Awesome </sarc>". It means there's 15 plates filled with raw fish sushi and sashimi, and then one plate filled with salads and chicken kari-agi (chicken nuggets for the uninitiated ;) ). Yep - pretty stubborn and fussy eater all right. The point of this monologue? My motto is "I eat to live, not live to eat".