Time to back it up to Tokyo, we were there over a month ago. It is hard to believe how time flies! Seriously, we have been here for over a month and I know we have done so much, but at the same time it feels like we don’t have enough time, it is such a paradox.

Tokyo was our first stop on our Japan trip, as expected it was a metropolitan city like many others, there were tall buildings, an advanced transit system and lots of places to eat with a dabble of history. Tokyo gently eased us into the cultural subtleties that Japan would introduce us to. Tokyo felt safe and friendly and we had no problem wandering the streets in search of good food and tourist sites.

As usual, Ed had done a great job of finding places for us to eat, including the first night when we arrived and he planned for us to go to a nearby ramen place. We never did find that place, but instead we found a quaint little local bar that was one of my favourite meals of the entire trip. The food was yummy, but the experience was really what made it memorable. We wandered in and were greeted by 5 business men drinking beer and one waitress who quickly realized that our lack of Japanese and her lack of English was going to be an issue, but she remedied it by asking the business men for help. They got as far as to getting us beer and then she disappeared into the back and then re-emerged with a man who we guessed was the chef. Turns out he was the chef and owner and spoke enough English to understand that we would eat whatever he recommended. He seemed delighted by the fact that we were giving him a chance to show off his skills and continuously came out of the kitchen with small plates of food. The first dish was cheese springrolls, my personal favourite and a dish I continued to talk about for the rest of the trip. The springrollls were followed by a chicken dish, a beef dish and finally a thick piece of seared bacon.

Tokyo continued to please us with more eating adventures.

As I think back to our Tokyo trip, I remember rain. Each day we were there was a mixture of wet snow or rain, which only dampened our mood slightly as we searched for recommended foodie spots. Like the morning we got up extra early to go and eat sushi breakfast. We arrived shortly after 6am and were not the first ones there. There was a lineup for the tiny restaurant and we waited for nearly 2 hours before finally getting into the infamous omakase breakfast. The sushi breakfast included 13 courses of super fresh sushi and 3 excited sushi chefs who seemed to be performing sushi theatre for us. The restaurant sat 15 people around a sushi bar were each course was served on a continuous bar top. Each piece of sushi was announced by our chef and we were told whether or not to add soya sauce depending on where the fish was from. Each piece was super fresh, including the surf clam that was still moving when it was served to us. To the dismay of our chef, I let Ed eat my piece and he seemed disappointed that I didn’t like it. I thoroughly enjoyed almost all the pieces except the baby shrimp one which was a little too slimey for my liking. It was definitely worth trying and the long wait.

And then there was the foodie adventure that took us down a dark alley to a hidden ramen place. Another recommendation that Ed dug up clues on and eventually found, the restaurant is marked by a large bone outside a black cloth vestible, certainly not a place you would just stumble into without knowing it was there. It was like we found a sercret society. This place only sat 5 people, we arrived early for dinner, around 5:30pm so we were the first of the dinner crowd. The man who runs the little shop jumped into action when we arrived. We were not the first tourists to find this place, he was prepared with an English menu with 5 dishes you could order. We ordered 2 ramen meals and watched as he got down to business. He fired up the soup pot, sliced pork and set the timer for the noodles. He had his method perfected to the second. As the soup boiled, he placed the noodles in a bowl, ladled the soup over top and lay the meat for presentation and served it to us with a bowl of fried onions for garnish. The broth was flavourful and the noodles cooked to order, we both thought the soup was a bit salty, but still very tasty.

I swear, we did do other things than eat…although it doesn’t really seem like it 🙂

Jenn