Finally today we got to go to the famous Tsukiji fish market!  We didn't go until later in the afternoon around 2:00pm.  Most of the action like the tuna auction happen early in the morning.  It is a different experience going later in the day.  A lot of the shopkeepers have time to chat with you.


We started with some grilled unagi.  Right is the regular meat, left is the guts.


We found this guy's stall with tons of fresh oysters, crab, and sea urchin.










We ordered up some oysters and he grilled them right there for us.










This one was my favorite.  So juicy and tastes like the sea but combined with a light but delicious umami-ness.



Yes that is what it looks like.  Live sea urchin!

Check out this video:





Another stand sold these little balloons filled with flavored tofu.  You buy one and he brings you out a bowl and then you pop the balloon and eat the goodness inside.



Here's a popped one.  Wasabi added.


This shopkeeper sold other stuff as well.  There were several different grades of karasumi.  We bought some of the most prized (and expensive) one and prepared it with pasta a couple days later.

The shopkeeper at this place was so nice.  He brought out a few plastic crates for us to sit down on and even grabbed some glasses and a couple of beers out of his fridge and shared them while we chatted with him for an hour or so.

He was an older guy and had a lot of great advice including:

"The best uni is from Rebun Island near Hokkaido."

"Don't go to restaurants in Japan that give out fliers" (A universal truth perhaps?)

"Try to make one great memory a day every day of your life."

        

Today we had an awesome dinner at this place that serves "ho-ru-mon" (sounds like Japanese pronunciation of hormone).  It is basically Japanese twist on Korean barbecue.  However, in addition the regular cuts of meat found at Korean BBQ joints, they specialize in guts, including all parts of the intestine. 


We started out with some wagyu liver sashimi.  This was the best liver I have ever eaten.  It was exploding with flavor - sweet, bitter, fresh - and the texture was smooth, creamy, and buttery. It did have the familiar bitter liver aftertaste - but it was a lot more subtle than in any other liver I've eaten.  I can still distinctly remember the taste and texture of this dish and I wish I had some in front of me now!!!



Instead of a gas grill on the tables, they had these woodburning ones which got surprisingly hot.



You get plates of raw meat, just like at a Korean BBQ place, and you cook it yourself on top of the hot grill.


the top left is strips of fatty pig.  everything else is wagyu.  Starting from top right and going clockwise: harami, throat, tongue, tail, and bottom left is wagyu kalbi!!! 


Meat was superfresh and lightly dusted with salt and pepper.  We didn't cook these for a long time preferring most cuts rare.



Here is a shot of some of the cooked stuff.  The harami was sort of liver-y.  The tongue was crazy.  It was tasty but the texture was just too weird for me.  Usually I've eaten tongue chopped or shredded but this one I felt like was actually eating an entire tongue!  Tail was great.  The throat was mostly cartilage and I didn't really care for it.  The kalbi was some of the best I've ever had.  It was not marinated but it's just so hard to beat wagyu.  Wagyu trumps all...



So here is their specialty, the HoRuMon.  It's basically all the guts, intestine, etc.  It is so hard to differentiate it just looking at the plate.  But we determined that our favorite was shojoo, small intestine.


Here's a shot of the small intestine cooking on the grill.  Even the HoRuMon we preferred rare.  It's taste was savory, a little bitter, creamy, and a tad sweet.

        

Today was one of my favorite days in Tokyo and definitely one of my favorite eating days.  Went to an okonomiyaki joint in Shinjuku.  Okonomiyaki is kind of a savory, eggy pancake with all kinds of stuff in it.


There is a hot grill plate on the table.  Add oil.


Then you basically start by making a kind of omelette with some cheese and spiced aioli. 

Not my omelette skills, fortunately I had help.


Next you add the good stuff including shrimp, pork, cabbage, squid, and pickled ginger.


Mix it up.  Add it to your omelette.  And then attempt to flip it.



I volunteered to filp it.  It didn't come out too bad!   


Then add some yakisoba noodles and sauce.

Fip the hour glass (I like the pink sand).


And cover it up to get everything cooked through.


When time's up move the noodles off the top and add okonomiyaki sauce.  Very pretty.


Put the noodles back on top and add egg.  Then start eating! 



The next thing we had was called monjayaki or just monja.  Includes pork, cabbage, and kimchee (good kimchee too, I ordered a side of it to munch on).


Sorry for sideways picture but you basically just mix everything up on the grill and make it into a little volcano that you pour the batter into.  The batter is very runny and liquidy so a good volcano is important!


See all the runny batter in the middle?


Here it is after cooking a while.  Then you spread everything out over the grill and let the runny sauce cook up until it is kind of crusted against the grill. 


Each person gets these little scraper things and you scrape away some of the crusted batter off the grill and scoop up some of the other goodness creating a perfect superbite.


Later we went to a nice dessert place in Shinjuku called Takano. 


Some beautifully presented and very tasty fruit parfait.  The mangoes were as good as any I've eaten in the Philippines.


Also got a melon parfait with some gelato.  Melon was so good.  Fruit in Japan is crazy good.

After a big lunch we didn't really have a planned dinner.  But on weekdays, many Japanese go to izakayas which are really pubs, but they serve amazing food.  Also there are many different themes.  Some izakayas look like restaurants and mostly serve food - the soba place we went to was technically an izakaya.  Other izakayas look like any dive bar you might find in the U.S. except the food they serve is incredidble - a lot more options than chicken fingers and fries.

So on this night we started off at a Celtic Pub izakaya, then went to a Mexican izakaya that served huge margaritas (and also some of the worst Mexican food I have ever had the misfortune tasting - NOTE: I tried a burrito at another place on a different day and it was horrendous.  Don't ever get Mexican in Japan!!!).   We finished off the night at a yakitori izakaya in Ueno and by that time we had some appetite back.



This is daikon on a stick served in a sauce with hot mustard on the side.


Potato croquette.  Good not great.


Chicken heart sashimi.  This was so good.  One of my favorite things I ate in Japan.  It had a texture like bologna and the taste reminded me a little of really fresh rare roast beef.


This is the grilled throat of the pig on a stick. 


Looks like throat, doesn't it?  It was tasty but a little too chewy and crunchy.  I didn't love the texture.  In the future I would eat it if it was on the table but probably wouldn't order it.


You know, I really liked our other yakitori place better than this one.  But I'll have to say this was the single best yakitori dish I had in Tokyo.  I was told it is the neck meat of the chicken.  It was so savory and mouthwatering.  Very chickeny.  The texture was like thigh meat but it was bursting with flavor.

I'd say it was a pretty good eating day today! 

        

Today we went to a place famous for tonkatsu (pork cutlets) located in the Ueno district of Tokyo .  It was quite a filling meal so I didn't eat anything else all day.

The tonkatsu was good - the best I've had.  So many different kinds of pork to try!


This was the standard tonkatsu.  It is the one they make the most so the are very good at it.  It was one of my favorites.

These were the fillets which were supposed to be the best quality pork.  I found them a bit dry but the taste was phenomenal.


This is the Black Pork.  I wish I had a better picture to show the really dark color of the meat.  This was my favorite one by far.  The meat was not only delicious but very juicy with some nice fat in there.  There was a distinct uniqueness to the pork that I was unfamiliar with but I really enjoyed. 


While there we also enjoyed some breaded whole shrimp.  These suckers were so crispy that you could just bite the head off and eat it.  The head was a little crunchy but tasted great.  I ended up eating several heads that my dining companions weren't as eager to eat.

This was a delicious meal!  It was definitely the heaviest meal I ate in Japan and I was full all day.  Most of the food I tasted in Tokyo was much healthier/lighter then food served in the U.S. but this was fairly greasy what with the pork fat and the fact that it's fried in fat.  In fact I would say that was the biggest difference between the tonkatsu I've had in the U.S. - most of the tonkatsu I've eaten stateside has had less fat and in turn it's been drier and less tasty.

        

This was the coffee shop in Akihabara where we started out most days. It is a chain that serves really good coffee.  Segalfredo's and another chain Veloce serve the best coffee in town.  Our usual was a quadruple shot of espresso over ice.  This took some time to explain what we wanted to the staff as it's not an order they get a lot.  By the time we left, they knew us and had the quad shots waiting!

We had a special lunch today, shabu shabu at a restaurant in Ueno.  And what made it even more special is that we were able to try three different grades of Wagyu beef.  For those who don't know, shabu shabu is a style of eating where raw veg and meat is brought out and you cook it yourself at your table in a light broth.  (kinda like some kinds of fondue).  For the veg you might cook it for a couple of minutes but for the thin sliced beef you don't let it leave your chopsticks and if you like it rare like me you are good after about 7 seconds!


Sorry for bad overexposed pic!  Left plate is the highest quality and right plate contains 2nd and 3rd grade.  (Think O-toro, Chu-toro, Maguro)



Condiments including minced daikon, green onions, shoyu/vinegar, walnut dipping sauce.



Some noodles for adding to the broth.



More overxposed pics!! 

The wagyu was incredible.  Even the lowest grade wagyu was better than any shabu shabu I've had stateside.  It was full of good beef taste.  The fattier cuts were savory without being greasy.


After finishing all the meat and veg, you are supposed to add some of the shabu shabu broth to a cup with some of the shoyu/vinegar sauce and some other condiments creating a little soup to finish them meal.  Oishii!


At night we went to a local udon noodle joint.  They make all their own noodles in house.  One thing I thought was much different from the U.S. is that they had about 10 different types of udon, but ONLY ONE OF THEM CONTAINED MEAT!  In the U.S. you would see like Chicken, Pork, Beef, Combination, and like one vegetarian option.  Here it was 9 veg options and one that just said "meat" (turned out was pork but they didn't even specify).  The options instead were like different combinations of seaweed and other vegetables and herbs. 


I went with the seaweed.  Also they always add one of the delicious Japanese eggs.  At the suggestion of my dining companion, I ordered it cold.  It was definitely refreshing in the summer heat, but after I had slurped the noodles down, it was strange to drink the cold broth, my American palette couldn't finish it whereas I think if I would've ordered it hot I probably would have finished every last drop!



My friend told me that it is a Japanese saying that the perfect number of udon noodles to grab with your chopstick is three!  The noodles were so good!  Best udon noodles I've ever had by far.  Firm, a little chewy, and delicious.  The broth was slightly sweeter than what I'm accustomed to but went well with the other ingredients especially the egg!!

        

Another light eating day today.  Had a croissant with morning coffee and not much all day.  At night we went to the yakitori place in Ueno and ordered much of the same dishes I've posted about (chicken sashimi, skewer grilled chicken, chicken skin). 



Here is a new dish we ordered.  Bacon wrapped eniokitake mushrooms.  Juicy, fresh, delicious.

A few thoughts on eating in Tokyo based on my very short stay:

- Many more mom and pop shops.  Instead of a TGIFridays and P.F. Chang's on every corner, there are many small 10-seater restaurants owned and run by a husband and wife team. This is not just true of restaurants, but little markets and stores as well.

- Food not so greasy in Japan.  For the first few days when I got back to the U.S. I felt like everything I was eating was so greasy that I was constantly grabbing for a napkin to wipe the grease off my hands. 

- More respect for cooking as an art.  There are many, many restaurants I've been to in the U.S. where the chefs hold the food in high regard and exhibit respect for the plates which they serve.  But there are many more that do not.  In Japan, for the most part, I did not find many restaurants where there was such a lack of respect common in many American eateries.

- KOBE BEEF!  I've eaten Japanese Wagyu beef a couple of times in the U.S.  Once I believe I paid $160 for 6 ounces and also at the French Laundry it was a $100 add-on.  But wagyu is so common in Japan.  I had it multiple times - grilled, shabu shabu.  You can even buy it at the 7-11!  On several occasions we ran down to 7-11 and bought some wagyu to have with our eggs in the morning.

- Eggs are amazing in Japan.  I can't help but think of David Chang interviews where he talks about his inspiration for his egg dishes coming from the time he spent in Japan.  Usually soft boiled, not runny but more of a firm pudding consistency.  Yolks are sunset orange.  I will definitely miss the eggs.

- Fruit.  I had some amazing fruit.  The grapes are so grapey!  And flavorful, and juicy.

        

Another light eating day today.  Been eating so much I guess I needed a break.


While walking down the street I saw this sweet "ROBOT SHOP".  I was in a rush so did not have time to go in, but it's probably better that way as I doubt the store would have lived up to the images my mind conjured up when I saw the name.

We went to a restaurant in the UDX building in Akihabara that sold a lot of things, but their specialty was miso soup.  They had a whole menu with 20 different choices.  We sampled the following five:



Mugi barley  miso - This had seaweed and spinach. It was my fav of the ones we tried today. It had incredible depth of flavor - bitter, a little tiny bit of sweet, some umami, and extremely fresh tasting.  Plus I'm a sucker for barley.



Sendai -Brown miso with eniokitake small mushrooms.  This was also very good.  But it had a tiny bit of that unfamiliar aftertaste but perhaps thats just an acquired taste that my unsophisticated palate can't appreciate.  But in spite of that one of my favs.



Shiro White miso - White miso is most common in the U.S. and certainly what my palate is accustomed to.  I was really impressed with the depth of the flavor of the miso.  A little more intense than what I've had stateside with some subtle undertones earthy as well as slight sour.  I did like this one very much.


Haccho Red miso This had watercress, turnips, and some enokitake mushrooms.  It had an astringent aftertaste that i couldn't appreciate.  Probably my least favorite.



French fries butter miso - This is just a gimmicky one I guess.  Imagine eating a bowl of drawn butter with bad dried out french fries floating around in it and a slight miso taste.  Actually this was probably my least favorite but I'm not really counting this.  Makes for a good photo though, right?


That night we went to Park Hyatt in Shinjuku - the one from the movie Lost in Translation.  It had breathtaking views of the city but a fog rolled in later in the night.  This is a shot I took out of the window while we still had some visibility.  One note I was really surprised at how poorly the servers spoke English.  You'd think in this most famous of all hotels in Japan that they would be pretty fluent.  Their English was ok but definitely not perfect.  Glad we were with some fluent speakers.   It was also ridiculously expensive.

 

        

Today was not much of an eating day.  Sampled some pastries with coffee in the morning and didn't really eat much else all day.

At night we went to Azabu-Juba for Soba.  Soba is noodles made on the premises from buckwheat flavor.  Served hot or cold, I have only ever eaten it cold and that is how we ordered it.  We also ordered the special "walnut dipping sauce."





Here is the setup.  Walnut dipping sauce in upper left corner.  To the right of that is the soba tsuyu sauce made of a dashi, sweet soy and mirin.  Below that is a bowl that you eat over that also has some wasabi you can add to the tsuya.  To the right are the buckwheat noodles on a bamboo tray called a zaru.  The process is to pick up some noodles with your chopsticks, dip them in one or both of the sauces, and then slurp them up.  Slurping noodles is not rude at all in Japan, it's the norm and it's the way to get the sauce (or broth in the case of ramen or udon) into your mouth.


Also served on the table is a hot kettle of the water that the soba noodles were cooked in.  When you finish your noodles (oops I didn't finish all of mine!) you pour the soba water into the whatever is left in your tsuya sauce and it becomes a little cup of soup to finish off your meal.

We also ordered a side of tempura mixed vegetables.  The pumpkin was great - sweet and full flavored.  I also really liked the tempura peppers - not too much heat but lots of taste.  Probably the favorite was the eggplant - well cooked, juicy, and very tasty.  Japanese vegetables are delicious.

Didn't really eat much else all day besides some pastries w coffee in the AM, so that's all I got for Day 6. 

        

On day 5 we went to the UDX building in Akihabara for Kushiyagi which is a style of cooking where items are lightly breaded in panko, skewered, and then deep fried in a secret blend of oil.  Seating is sushi bar style and the cooks are just on the other side making each of your items fresh.


This is the initial setup you are provided with including 5 different sauces.  From left to right:  hot mustard, sauce similar to katsu sauce, curry peanut sauce, shoyu, and lemon juice.



This was a delicious beef with green onion in the center.  The breading is light and tasty.


Shrimp - eat the whole thing tail and head.


There was salmon with cheese in this.  I like the presentation.


Asparugus


Wagyu steak

Shitake mushroom - juicy and tasty.


Duck - cook recommended using the curry sauce for this one.


This crab was one of my favs, just wish there was more meat on the bone.


They called this one "onion" but it actually had a secret little piece of hot dog in the middle!

There were so many other options here.  They offer 42 different items.  If you eat all of them you get your name in Japanese on this cool plaque - maybe I'll go back and try for the record!



Later we were walking through Ameoko, the outdoor markets in Ueno.  We decided to stop by a takoyaki stand (fried octopus).  I guess theme of day was fried food.
 


You start by putting a katsu type sauce on the Takoyaki (also called "octopus balls") then add mayonaisse.



Finish it off by adding seaweed and katsuobushi (shredded fish).  This stuff was straight out of the fire and took a while to cool down.  Once it did it was quite good.  Although I'll have to say I've had stuff this good or almost as good in the U.S. (like on St. Mark's in NYC).



At night we went to an izakaya in Shibuya.  Although izakayas are defined as drinking establishments that serve food, they are very different.  Some look like regular sitdown bars whereas this one looked like a dive bar you'd find in the U.S.  Only difference was the type of bar food available.  My favorite thing on their menu was chicken fried cartilidge.  It had a nice crunch and good flavor.  Dip it in ketchup! 


Another interesting thing on the menu was stingray.  This was fairly bland and tasteless much like most other whitish, slimy-ish, translucent things from the sea (e.g. sea cucumber, shark fin, jellyfish, etc).




Later that night we went to a ramen place in Shibuya.  Again we got the don kutsu (bone marrow) ramen but it was quite different here.  The one we went to on Day 2 was lighter and you could see little bits of marrow in the broth.  This broth had so much marrow in it that it was super thick almost like a gravy. The egg was again the soft boiled variety which I've found at so many places throughout Tokyo.  Also shown above is sliced pork, green onions, and peppers.

        

We started day 4 off at our regular coffee shop, Segalfredo's in Akihabara (I'll be sure get some photos of that later). 

We then checked out Yodobashi which is the 7 story electronics building in Akihabara - an area known as the Electronics District.  There are so many different products, after spot checking a few items I found that there wasn't anything that much more advanced than what we can get in the U.S. and because the dollar is so weak, the prices were a little higher.  There are definitely many things that I've never seen before like a $1,000 rice cooker that emulates cooking rice over a hot stone.

There is a Sushi Zanmai location at the bottom of Yodobashi and we scouted it out earlier and noticed they had large Shima Aji (striped jack) in their tanks.  These were 2 - 2.5 lbs compared with the smaller .5 lb mackarel (Aji) we had eaten earlier in the week.  So we decided to go for it. 


The sushi bar



Our sushi chef


Notice the tank in the background.




In this video notice our sushi chef behind the frosted glass killing the Shima Aji removed from the tank. You can also see the tank on the top right of the screen with a couple of other Shima Aji's swimming around in there.


This is a long video of our chef cutting it up.



The finished product.  I've had Shima Aji a lot in the U.S. it's one of my favorites.  But eating something that was basically still alive and had been swimming around just a couple minutes earlier was next level.  It was buttery.  The temperature was slightly warm.  It was one of the freshest tasting things I've ever put in my mouth. 


Trying to feed him a piece of himself.



Yes we got more of the 67c maguro shown above.



Instead of getting the head and tail tempura fried, we had them put it in a miso soup.  It was very good - I got some of the cheek meat which is quite tasty when cooked.   The miso soup was a great way to end a delicious and memorable meal.


At night we went to Shomben Yokocho (literally translated "Piss Alley") which has dozens of yakitori places lined up.  It is a short walk from Shinjuku station - the busiest station in Tokyo.  We didn't have any intelligence on a which of these were any good so we just arbitrarily picked one place.  It was not anywhere near the quality of the one we have been going to in Ueno, I think we were spoiled by that.  But it was a fun experience walking up and down this alley and Shinjuku station is truly a sight to be seen.


Negi ma - Pork and young onions


Chicken skin


In the middle notice the sliced Renkon  (Lotus root).  It had a fairly neutral flavor, somewhat earthy.  Goes well with beer or as a pallate cleanser.  Yakitori joints are basically drinking establishments that serve a lot of grilled food on skewers  (yaki tori means "grilled chicken" but they grill up all kinds of other things or as we saw earlier this week sometimes they don't cook it at all!!!)



Chicken liver on left and pig tongue on right.  Eh - I've had better liver.  Tongue was pretty good.



Chicken heart and pork cheek.  The pork cheek was excellent - very tasty and tender.  I'd get the heart again too, some bitterness mixed with umami, but this one was slightly overcooked.

Another fun day in T-Town!!!!