Was near Motegi at a roadside center, saw a charcoal fish cook
The simply skewered the fish from the mouth to tail. No cleaning, simple salt. Then they stuck the fish around the charcoal. You eat it off the skewer
Not at all yakitori but thought it was interesting. The fish was tasty albeit a bit over salted for my taste. This is apparently a fresh water river fish that is abundant in very clean waters. They were about 6 inches long. I could see doing this in the states with large smelt or medium sardines. Certainly would love to do this with salmon but would probably take a bit to work out.
The rig is just an iron bowl, filled with coarse sand, the charcoal set in the middle. I have seen pictures of cooking setups like this where they use binchotan stacked vertically to radiate the heat out to chicken or beef skewers...
Thought I would share with the _ya...