Well, we all know the Japanese would kill for fish and they are crazy about them – rightly so, since their diet consists mainly of seafood and not red meat and poultry like the rest of the western world. Knowing how important fish is to the average Japanese and knowing that they are absolutely fanatical about using QR Codes for literally anything and everything they can get a QR code on, would it surprise you to find out, now, that the fish in Japan are now being tagged QR Code so that the general consumers can find out exactly where the fish came from?

Basically, the QR Code will lead cell phone users to mobile web pages that will tell the interested purchaser where the fish was caught which will give consumers the general idea about how fresh and nutritious the fish they are about to purchase is. Japanese are rather picky about their fish and the ones reared in ponds and man-made environment fetch less yen compared to those which are caught from the sea and coastline. The fresher they are, the better.

However, at this point in time, not all fishes are tagged with QR Codes. Only prized fishes are, but this is not to say that in the very near future, other types of fishes won't receive the same tags as well. Right after landing and right before being shipped out for sale, the fishes will have a label with a printed QR Code on them.

Will this frenzy spread to other parts of the world? Not so fast for the US. We are still navigating through the very narrow learning curve over here. But it seems that people in Norway are quickly catching up – not surprisingly because both Japan and Norway thrive on their fish exports. In a related news section on the web, linked through Twitter, we found that the Norwegian Seafood Association went arm-in-arm with COOP and TraceTracker to launch this QR Code fish tagging exercise to promote e-traceability in the country.