TOKYO -- For many Japanese, summer means enjoying tasty bowls of steamed rice topped with slabs of broiled eel slathered with soy sauce. However, the huge popularity of the dish -- traditionally seen as a way to beat the heat -- has led to overfishing in local waters, sending prices sky-high.
That is why much of the eel turning up on dining tables here these days hails from China, which offers far lower prices for the delicacy. And increasingly, Indonesia has emerged as another low-cost source of the snakelike fish.
