A Huge Seafood Gap

En route to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I was thumbing through Continental's in-flight magazine when I came to a two-page section called "The Guide to Sushi." Which is where I saw this interesting comparison:

Annual per capita consumption of fish in the U.S. . . . 16.5 lbs.

Annual per capita consumption of fish in Japan . . . . . . 154 lbs.

I would have guessed that Japan's per-capita fish consumption was 4 or 5 times higher, but 9 times higher than ours? Reading that stat definitely surprised me a little.

It was also rather eye-opening to learn that Tokyo is the top-ranked city when it comes to earning Michelin stars. A grand total of 191 stars were awarded this year by Michelin to restaurants in the Japanese capital, compared to 97 stars in Paris, 54 in New York and 34 in San Francisco.