Yeah, this guys got skills no doubt. Wish I understood Japanese to learn from what he was saying.
But I have to say this - I'm shocked at the amount of water used!!! Living in CO near the Continental Divide where most of our nation's water is at it's source, water - rights, usage, conservation - are big issues here. Also, I grew up in a crummy house w/ a poor well that would go dry in the summer. My father had a big 500 gal or tank chained onto an old flat bed truck and we used to go to a well on some other farm property to fill the tank up and then dump it into our well. Water conservation has been instilled in me since I was a kid - out of necessity - and watching fish butchering vids makes me gasp at the water waste. Just had to get that off my chest...
Jon - a couple of questions;
If the fish is skinned after the fillets are removed, why is such care taken in scaling the fish first? Is it so the cuts are as clean as possible through the skin? If so, why not just scale the areas around where the cuts are made? Is the skin used as well?
Can you describe a little how/why the design/construction of a deba works so well for fish and why it's better than a western or double bevel knife?
When cutting a fillet, does it matter which side of the blade is against the bones and which is against the flesh?
I've been wanting one for a while, even though I don't have much use for whole fish (thinking more for whole chickens, but any knife will do for that; perhaps for the occasional pike I take f/ a lake...), and I've got some of my own ideas about why they work but of course I could be wrong. Thanks a ton for posting this!!! Cheers! mpp