Have you had Tuna Spaghetti recently?

I did for lunch the other day, and it was really good, a fresh marinara sauce with chunks of white tuna and several stalks of asparagus on top.

I don’t remember seeing much in the way of seafood pasta dishes in the States, but they’re among my favorites here in Japan, and many restaurants offer good spaghetti alla pescatora, even your basic family restaurants like Denny’s and Coco’s.

Living in Japan certainly makes you appreciate seafood, and I eat all kinds of things I would never have otherwise, from sushi and sashimi to miso-stewed mackerel, although I do draw the line at shio-kara, which is pickled squid intestines — that’s just going too far.

There’s one problem: I tend to know the names of fish in Japanese, and can even write them in kanji in some cases, but I often have no idea what the name of the fish I’m eating is in English.