“I think the food is wonderful,” said Stephen Redmond in a traditional Japanese inn facing the Tsugaru Channel in northern Honshu. “But I don’t want to eat anything that I am not used to before I swim.”

“Can you pass the bread and cheese?” he asked to his friend and trainer Noel Browne. In addition to shark brain, Redmond was served different kinds of sashimi (raw fish), squid (boiled, fried and mixed with vegetables), clams of various sizes, tuna intestines and a variety of seaweeds by his Japanese hosts.

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