An unusual Japanese delicacy made even more unusual by the fact that it is not raw. Prepared by eating a raw jumbo shrimp (remember to suck out the yummy brains!), dipping the remains in batter, and quickly deep-frying the result. This magically transforms the chitinous shell into a crunchy goodie that tastes very much like a potato chip, except that you have to spit out the eyeballs (they harden into glass beads), and most potato chips don't have long antennae or dozens of little insect legs hiding in their mouths.

A (more) common variant is deep-fried unshelled little shrimp, kawaebi karaage, eaten whole with a dab of mayonnaise, usually as an accompaniment to beer. But they look much less scary when they're small...

(Incidentally, I've never seen deep-fried shrimp heads on a menu by themselves; better izakaya will serve the shrimp themselves as sashimi and then ask you if you want to fry the remains.)

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