Dancing squid bowl dish in Hakodate

8/24/11 - Video and account were down for a while due to a bogus copyright claim. I'm glad it's back up so I can share this weird experience with everyone!

A seafood bowl I ate in Hakodate in Hokkaido, Japan. It had salmon roe and seaweed and some other things, with the highlight being the "dancing" squid on top.

Dancing squid dishes seem to be at many restaurants in Hakodate, but this particular one may have been the only one with this bowl set. The place was located in the seafood restaurant arcade across the parking lot from Hakodate Station if anyone is interested.

Edit: I added some information in a reply comment but it's now buried somewhere. The basic idea behind the sodium in the soy sauce causing the legs to move has been covered in the comments, but there's still some question as to whether or not it's officially "dead" at the time of serving. The brain is probably still in the body, but a significant part of its nervous system, the giant axon, I believe extends into the mantle, which has been cut. I'm not an expert on squids so I can't really come to a definite conclusion about that.
As you can see in the beginning, it's not moving at all when it's brought out so I assume that signals around the body have stopped, whereas a fresh intact squid out of water would constantly move around. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's "dead" but it seems to me that it's at least incapacitated.

Here's an explanation of a similar occurrence using frog legs:
http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/1...

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[Beecels]

it's already dead you bleeding heart, it's a reaction to the soy sauce that makes it move.

[OJSoFunky]

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[ThePandaPlayGame]

Shut up. And you sicken me. You are much more crazy than a person putting soy sauce on a squid.

[TheSammy9803]

You have have problems

[jbentio]

HEY dumbass the octopus is dead; the surface is just reacting to the ions from the sauce. Just like when we are dead we still move a little bit when are just recently died as well as shit. Just because you eat your cows and pigs all chopped doesn't mean it wasn't brutally killed for you to eat.

[jiniton]

that cool and noble. we respect that but meat is fucking delicious

[blucheez19]

While its brain is still inside its body, the brain has still been disconnected from all of the other organs. It's essentially like a decapitated head.

[A Matías Quezada]

Many of you are saying it's dead, of course it's muscles are reacting to soja, but how do you know it's dead? Squid's brain is located on the visible open part of it's body, it can be alive.

[whitelightningkfx kusucks]

You do realize that their not torturing it right? All that is happening is the same thing that happens in our bodies when our muscles receive a signal to move. Its caused by sodium and i believe potassium leaving and entering through a membrane that is positively charged on one side and negatively charged on another. This reversal of charges causes movements.

[AhriDaFox]

GET THIS SHIT OFF OF ME !!