Tokyo Day 2

The morning started off with a splash! After a nice breakfast buffet, we headed out to the fish market. We scoped out the different styles of fish and it's packaging and marketing to consumers, like the raw tuna served up in a oyster shell that we tried. We arrived at one restaurant right as an R2-D2 looking vehicle drove up to deliver a 140lb tuna, along with sword-length knives to be used for quartering and carving the massive catch. Many restaurants use those catches as events to draw crowds to their tables, so we got to watch the show! Fish, I learned, is much easier to cut when it is frozen. That being said, it still took long, sharp blades and two men to carve through the biggest sections of this tuna!

We got back to the car, which it is worth noting was a “Century” brand with a V12 engine. This is a Japanese car company that is not mass-produced but is only manufactured to order in Japan.

Lunch was at a traditional rice pot restaurant. This type of meal is rice cooked in a traditional style pot along with several other ingredients: shrimp, fish, vegetables, mushrooms, and chicken was included in our dish.  

After lunch we walked through a neat shopping alley and picked out a few souvenirs. Then we went into a Buddhist temple, which we learned is primarily for honoring spirits of ancestors. We also went next door and visited a Shinto shrine, which is for honoring the natural world. Both religious sites coexist next to each other because the Japanese culture accepts and values each equally. I commented to our tour guide that many other religious groups would do well to learn that type of tolerance and acceptance of religions other than their own.

We walked through a trendy pedestrian street lined with restaurants on our way to dinner. Our guide pointed out a fish tank in one restaurant’s window and explained it contained a type of fish which has organs that are poisonous to humans, so the chef that prepares it must have a special license. I was glad that was not on the menu for us! Instead, we would be helping prepare our own meal at the private kitchen of a Michelin-star chef.

The menu: Kobe beef. Anthony was in heaven to be able to learn hands on from a chef of that caliber, and Simon and I both enjoy cooking so we were excited. First the chef walked us through the creation and beautiful presentation of a few appetizers, and explained why he chose particular ingredients, and the way in which to prepare those ingredients. 

There is a lot of legend and lore about Kobe beef. I’m not sure how much of it is true, but what I do know is the beef was so tender that we could actually cut through it with our wooden chopsticks. Because it is so tender and has about an 85% lean meat ratio, the taste is almost too rich for me. Just almost J 

We finished with a dessert of fruit covered in whipped cream, topped with finely-grated chestnuts. Although I’m quite biased towards chocolate, the dessert was quite nice and I ended up finishing Simon’s. 

After that fine meal, and bowing to our gracious hosts, we walked around Tokyo for a bit before retiring back to the hotel, where Simon was overjoyed to play Pokemon Mahjang with us. The instructions and pieces were all in Japanese, but we think we figured out the proper way to play. The champion and reigning Pokemon Master was, of course, Simon!

Continue to Tokyo Day 3 here.