Hagfish- For Sex or Sustenance?

There is a plethora of great little restaurants within a five minute walk from my house, like  probably literally over 50.  There are a gang of Hofs, the Korean equivalent to a bar and all of them serve a ton of tasty treats like delicious soups, savory pancakes, and have a fried food menu so vast it makes you wonder how old Korean men aren't dropping dead in the street at every corner.  There are plenty of BBQ joints that always have burning wood coals chilling outside their restaurants.  You can often see the waiters carrying in steel bowls of white hot wood with a flat steal bar that looks like a giant slim gym (the kind you use to break into cars not the OOHHHH YEEAAh! "Macho Man" Randy Savage variety).   Fresh Tuna restaurants are plentiful and exquisite.  For 20k won you can stuff your face with all the raw tuna you can handle and be served side dish after side dish like some sort of royal dignitary.  There are also a surprising number of restaurants that specialize in fried chicken.  I mean go figure, who would have thought that Yongin would have more fried chicken than Oakland.  Then of course you have your small mom and pop style places.  They are usually about half the size of a Subway Sandwich in the States and from what I gather you can eat as much as you can handle for around 4k won.  Then of course there is the flip side.  There are the trifling western restaurants.  The most common bastardizations usually come in the form of Italian restaurants.  These places are really pretty piss poor.  In a country where very, very few of the grocery stores sell cheese and you can't get a decent loaf of bread anywhere, Italian food might be a little lofty a goal to strive towards.  Bless them for trying though, god knows I've patronized them out of shear desperation my fair share of times.  Then of course there are the mind numbingly strange restaurants.

There is a little restaurant directly around the corner from my house that specializes in Hagfish.

Truly inspired graphic design for a restaurant that specializes in prehistoric meat.

I pass by/smell this tank every day.  I think if you look carefully you can see some slime formations.

  Now, "what is Hagfish" you may be asking yourself?  Well, allow me to answer.  Hagfish is a strange creature that is not easily identifiable.  It is neither an invertebrate or a vertebrate, a fish or an eel.  These slimy creatures, typically about 14 inches in length, have a small skull, but no spine.  They are ancient.  Like, they have been writhing around in the deep sea abyss' of every ocean floor for over 300 million years, making them one of the oldest living creatures this side of Earth.  And they are also fucking gnarly, I mean just thinking about them makes me want to deposit a little half puke in my mouth.  They don't even kill like normal beasts.  They lurk on the bottom of the ocean and when their prey comes trolling by they try to dig a little hole into their belly's and wiggle their way inside their guts where they proceed to eat their victims from the inside out!  They also like digging into dead sea creatures and giving them the old inside out treatment as well.  To make matters even more heinous, they're gooey.  They secrete a uniquely disgusting slime.  In fact, they are one of the slimiest creatures in the universe.  Here check it out:

This first video is a nice little intro to the slime/gnarly factor.

This one is a bit more comprehensive and educational, but still, gives me Yukmouth.

Anyhow, if you want to know more about Hagfish, watch that second video above, It really gives a pretty straight forward breakdown of the unique properties of this vile little beast.  Perhaps the real reason these things gross me out so much is because of a VBS short I watched just before I left to Korea about Japanese eel porn.  The shit kind of blew my mind.  It is totally bizarre to me, but not without it's artistic merit, I mean take a look at that still photography.... whoa.  But perhaps most of all, I love Diakichi's total nonchalant, unashamed attitude about his porno.  Note:  This is probably not going to fly at your place of employment.  Check it out:

Not necessarily for the faint of heart

Enter the eel

Now perhaps you can understand my hesitation regarding the notion of eating Hagfish.  I mean, I know now that the eels in the videos were of course not hagfish, as I believe the viscous slime produced by these creatures would make any sort of man-beast love more or less impossible, but still, they look awfully similar. 

 Final verdict:  Hagfish is for sustenance as sex is logistically improbable.  These creatures are much better suited to eat... I guess.