Tokyo Food Lineup, cont.

Memory is fading a bit already, but I'll do my best.

Day 4, dinner: Restarant Engaku in Daikanyama, a kaiseki joint run by The Plum Lady. The proprietess knows everything plum, and there's even a book about her plum knowledge. Dinner starts with homemade plum wine, and continues through many beautifully arranged and tasty courses. Sad to say I can barely remember what most of them were, though there was definitely an assortment of seafood and meats, a delicious rice porridge, and traditional frothy tea at the end. The hostess even treated us to some incense listening - apparently serious incense people don't smell it, they listen to it - where tiny slivers of wood were set on a glass plate over a heat source packed in sand. Precious and very delightful-smelling. She even shared records of incense-listening sessions much like wine tastings, where guests took guesses at the sources and similarities of the incense sources. Whew.

Day 5, lunch: we stroll through the Asakusa district, admiring the Golden Turd atop Philippe Stark's Asahi building, and the temple, and the kitch stalls stretching to the horizon. We duck into a tempura restaurant and have truly mediocre tempura. A bust!

Day 5, dinner: Dinner definitely makes up for lunch. After watching a performance at the Tokyo Symphony, our gracious hosts take us up to the Ark Hills Club where we enjoy a parade of beautiful, delicious, and extraordinary sushi. Just awesome. The chef even shares a particular eggplant with us, which can be eaten raw - and tastes delicious. We're all completely stuffed, and wander about the club in a sushi high, admiring the views of Tokyo and the art by Le Corbusier.

Day 6, lunch: After discovering that the neighborhood tempura joint (recommended to us by the hotel staff) is closed, we settle for noodles in Ebisu, 99-something. It's crowded and noisy and Mom doesn't like it much, but I'm happy to have tasty noodles on a rainy day. Plus, the table is fully of funky additives.

Day 6, dinner: We return to the site of previous exploits, the yakitori joint. After a week of glorious feasting, we decide to tone it down and stick (mostly) to vegetables. Wrapped in bacon. Asparagus, tomatoes, and enoki mushrooms. Once again, delicious.

Mom heads back to Shanghai, but I stay on a for a few days of work in the Tokyo office. Sunday night I meet up with a colleague and we enjoy noodles at Ippudo. They're so big they've started a restaurant in NYC. One feature is they provide cloves of garlic and a presser at the table so you can have fresh squashed garlic in your noodles. Serious yum.

Monday night, another colleague and I go to Ninja in Akasaka. This turns out to be a theme park and a very good restaurant - we are led by a ninja through the "dangerous" path to our table, and served by various server ninjas, and entertained by a ninja magician. The food is really good in spite of the kitch factor - foams and flavors put together in an updated fusion mix. The only real miss was the dessert - one of them had a delicious flan on top of what can only be described as "snot noodles". Ew.

Tuesday before getting on the plane, I follow my colleagues to a tempura joint not far away. It's fabulous. While I wouldn't ordinarily consider paying $30 for a set tempura lunch, this is totally worth it. We have 4 different plates of piping hot tempura, plus rice and crunchy vegetables and tea. Finally! Light, melt-in-your mouth tempura that doesn't obscure the taste of the food inside!


Other notes from the trip:
On the way back from dinner one night, we sample the local hole-in-the-wall-yet-very-famous tako yaki - octopus balls. They are puffy, creamy, scorching hot dough balls with a morsel of octopus inside. I can't say I was an instant fan, but they weren't repulsive either.

The money-washing shrine in Kamakura, where you put your yen in a basket and use the shrine's stream to "wash" it. Copious incense fires nearby help you (carefully) dry your damp yen. Money so washed is supposed to return in multiple, so we're advised to spend it wisely.

Mom and D and I hit the town, and check out the Art Deco Teian Art Museum. The exhibit there features export ceramics (not so interesting), but the building itself is a beautiful Art Deco confection, with really lovely details in things like the stairway railings and radiator covers. We also tromp about the garden a bit, deserted due to the rain showers, and smelling slightly of ginko.

We tackle another neighborhood museum, the Meguro Art Museum. It's a small space and no translations are available, and we're the only ones in the Museum. We eventually figure out that the works are by Japanese artists in the style of impressionist painters and have a reasonably good time.

I bought a few pairs of Japanese split-toe socks, with the idea that I like wearing my flip-flops in the house but sometimes it's chilly. They're working out grandly, and I'm wearing them now. Yay, warm feet!