<i> FUGU,</i> BUT ONLY FOR DARING DINERS

Tsukuba, 2212 W. Artesia Blvd., Torrance, (213) 538-4828. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Parking in lot. Beer and wine. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $25-$75.

A person who gives up his life for a higher aesthetic is revered in the Japanese culture. Even a culinary adventurer who dies trying to achieve a higher sensory threshold is remembered as a hero, like poor Mitsugoro Bando, the famous Kabuki dancer who died while eating the liver of a blowfish.

Fugu is a small blowfish with a wonderfully unique taste; eating its flesh is not dangerous, except to your budget. The liver, however, can be deadly. It contains a numbing poison that, taken in excess, causes paralysis and asphyxia and in small amounts brings a narcotizing tingle to the lips. Year after year, macho Japanese pay highly for the experience.

A special license is required to serve the liver in Japan, which for obvious reasons is unavailable in the United States. The rest of the fugu can be eaten safely, and is found in sashimi, in delicately fried slices, or swimming in a nabe , the boiling pot. A few Japanese restaurants in California make it available in season.

None does it as well as Tsukuba, a tiny Torrance restaurant with a numbing number of different menus and specialty items. Tsukuba offers a choice of set courses with fugu starting at $39.50 a person (two-person minimum). Also featured are seasonal rarities such as suppon , a kind of turtle, and dishes using matsutake , the costliest and most delicate of Japanese woodland mushrooms. Seiro-meshi , rice and glorious accompaniments steamed together in a bamboo box, is served year-round.

Tsukuba resembles the little bamboo boxes it serves: The windows are framed by wooden slats giving you the feeling that you are inside a Japanese box. Just as they would be in the rabbit warrens that pass for restaurants in urban Japan, everyone is shoehorned together. The effect is pleasantly claustrophobic, and spirits run high.

The clientele is mostly Japanese-speaking, but you will not feel out of place. Waitresses in constant motion stop by your table again and again. People offer you tastes of their dishes. Someone might even buy you a drink.

The first night we visited, there was a 20-minute wait for a table. I brought my wife, who is Japanese, and two Chinese friends. There wasn’t another Caucasian face to be seen.

When we were finally seated, I asked the waitress if there was any fugu, but she shook her head no. My Chinese friends seemed relieved.

We started with edamame , boiled, salted Japanese green beans, and gradually made our way through an exceptional dinner: tenderly fried soft-shell crab, succulent braised eggplant with miso paste, hamaguri (clams steamed in sake) and udon suki, a large fire pot. The dishes were accompanied by little plates of kiriboshi daikon , a red-tinged relish made of grated carrot and pepper. This relish is a symbol of autumn and represents fallen maple leaves. (My Chinese friend thought it was catsup.)

To complete our meal, we had ordered seiro-meshi , wooden boxes in which salmon roe, shredded salmon and crab meat were steamed atop mounds of white rice. All in all, it was so much food that we could barely eat a dessert of red bean ice cream.

In the car, I overheard my Chinese friends saying how superior their own dishes were to Japanese ones. When I related this to my wife, she laughed out loud. “Next time, let’s go alone,” she said. “They won’t appreciate fugu .”

We called in advance to make sure it was available, but when we ordered the fugu sashimi, it mysteriously made no appearance. In its stead came a deep-fried flounder, light, fresh and crispy. A good Japanese kitchen does not reuse its frying oil, and our fish was cooked in fresh oil. Nonetheless, it was anticlimactic. Where was the fugu ?

Another course arrived, kani no yoshinoni , whole braised crab generously laden with shiitake and a rich sauce that we mixed with our rice. Still no fugu.

And then, suddenly, it came. The white fish was sliced paper-thin and arranged on a large blue plate. I felt a flush of anticipation.

I dipped a slice into the sauce and put it in my mouth. The first sensation was a slightly sweet, woodsy, fragrant buzz, but that was all. . . . It was a letdown. My wife was measuring me, waiting for a reaction; this was her chance to see her husband, the food critic, in action. She looked me square in the eye and said, “Well?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s kind of bland.”

My wife looked away. “Americans drink Coke with Japanese food,” she said loftily.