At an eel restaurant near Tokyo, four friends sit down to eat a Japanese delicacy now the subject of a heated international debate as its numbers decline.

The eel, hugely popular across Japan, is also endangered and will be discussed at a key global forum that regulates trade of threatened wildlife, starting in Uzbekistan on Monday.

"It's a luxury dish that we eat to treat ourselves or to celebrate an occasion," Yukiko Takahashi, a 52-year-old saleswoman told AFP as she tucked into her food at Hiranuma Suisan.

"Today, we friends came here to lift our spirits."

Japan is strongly opposed to a proposal by the European Union, Panama and Honduras to list all 17 species of eels worldwide under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which restricts trade of prote

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