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Good taste of sushi is now world-widely known, so you don't think eating raw fishes is a strange custom.
You know sushi is with rice, but I don't know whether sashimi is as popular as sushi or not. Sashimi is almost like sushi but without rice, only raw fishes. It's especially excellent as a relish.
Sliced raw fishes or shellfishes are used as sashimi. Tunas, abalones, or sea urchins are very popular.
Scallops are rather cheap here, so high qualified sushi restaurants usually do not use it because sushi is believed a high class dish. They have to choose materials severely.
But if you're an epicure, you know expensive stuffs are not always the best. The most important part of it is the taste itself. You need to have an eye for each material if you want to eat the real good things.
I found the scallops in the picture at a usual supermarket but it's a hit this time. As they usually do not sell whole scallops like those in the picture, boiled scallops are common. When they sell them this way, the quality tends to be far better than usual.
Boiled scallops are only the ivory part but the whole scallops contain other parts. I like the orange and the black part. Especially the orange part tastes almost like salted sea urchin ovaries. If you're well informed in Japanese foods or a sushi connoisseur, you know what I mean. Oysters are great but whole scallops are also not bad if it's very fresh. I recommend eating them salted or with little lemon juice.
When it comes to eating something as sushi or sashimi, I like salmon roe, sea urchin ovaries, abalones, or high qualified tuna called toro. Those are always very expensive because they're rare. Scallops are common and cheap but sometimes better than those expensive ones.
By the way, scallops are called hotate [hotate] in Japanese, salmon roe is ikura [ikula], salted sea urchin ovaries are uni [uni], and abalones are awabi [awabi]. If you have a chance to come to Japan and have sushi as your dinner, say uni or awabi, make it sashimi, and a chef or cooks realize that you're a very well-informed sushi connoisseur. But caution! You should prepare for an exorbitant bill in the end. (laugh)
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foods
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