Japan: The Food Post

This is the post you've all been waiting for - tales of eating in Japan! As mentioned before, this trip was different from most we've taken due to the activity to eating ratio, but we still managed to fit in a lot of food-related activities!  If you haven't been to Japan, you might think we had sushi for every meal, but I don't even think we had it our first 3 days there.  We ate lots of noodles and ramen and katsu and all kinds of things!

Clockwise from top left: Conveyor belt sushi and sake tasting - watch out for the whale; a restaurant designed around a fake sumo ring; seafood breakfast at our hotel in Asakusa in Tokyo; a pancake cooking right in the middle of our table

We also saw a lot of very strange foods - including boob shaped pastries and raw horse meat. And don't forget - there's always money in the banana stand.

There are a few meals in particular that stand out - kaiseki at Rion, the cooking class we took and our dinner at the New York Grill in the Park Hyatt Tokyo (which Rob will tell you more about later).  However, our most memorable meal was the one we had in a tiny hole in the wall in Kyoto, where the menu was "whatever the chef feels like cooking tonight."

Dinner at Rion

Kaiseki is a Japanese style haute cuisine meal, and usually involves multiple courses, like a tasting menu.  We were able to make reservations at Rion in Kyoto, which is a two-star Michelin kaiseki in Gion.

I'm not sure what all we ate, but everything was amazing - and the champagne sorbet for dessert was divine!  Bottom left is one of the dishes - a whole fish grilled over rice.  We were right at the counter so could watch everything being made.

Cooking with Emi

Our second to last night in Kyoto we met up with Emi for a lesson in Japanese cooking. She took us into her home and taught us some tradition Japanese recipes and methods (including cooking with chopsticks), as well as a lot about the ingredients.

As shown in the top right, Emi clapped excitedly whenever we did the tiniest thing sort of correctly - she was very enthusiastic. Made me miss my grandmother!  We made tuna sushi rolls, a veggie salad with sesame paste dressing, waygu beef rolls and strawberry mochi!

Kitchen Rakuraku

Our last night in Kyoto we stayed at Shunko-in Temple in Northwest Kyoto, and were recommended to eat at Kitchen Rakuraku, which means "easy easy" in Japanese. This turned out to be the best night we spent in Japan. The restaurant is very small - just one bar lined up along the kitchen - with seating for 10-12 people. When you arrive, the chef, Akira, hands you a piece of paper that says "is there anything you can't eat dislike food?" You let him know what you don't want, and he puts together something you will.

The food itself is out of this world, but the entire experience was magical. We spent hours sitting at the bar and chatting to Akira (he speaks English) and our fellow patrons - almost all of whom were also staying in the temple. My only regret is that we didn't discover it earlier in our trip - we would have been back there every night asking for something new.

If you pass the doorway pictured in the top left, stop in for the best culinary experience in Japan. The middle right picture shows our chef - and the view from our seat - you can tell everything is going to be delicious because of how messy the kitchen is. Bottom right - our chef smoking in the kitchen. He was also drinking some kind of Japanese potato liquor. Akira is a legend.

Tsukiji Fish Market

The fish market in Tokyo is a "must do," so we headed down there with all the other tourists on our second to last day in Japan. Tourists aren't allowed in the main market until after 9am, but there was still plenty going on. It didn't smell the best, and I should probably burn the shoes I was wearing, but the sushi we got for breakfast after was the freshest sushi I've ever had.

At the fish market - top middle is what I like to call a fish sword. Because some of the fish were too big for mere knives.

Drinking tea

As an avid tea drinker, I was really looking forward to the Japanese tea scene - and I was not disappointed!  We experienced a traditional Tea Ceremony at En in Gion, and it ended up being my favourite thing we did on the entire trip. I can't really describe the way that it was done, but there was a lot of craft and tradition behind every movement and every sound - from the dropping of a napkin against the tatami mats to the scooping of water from the pot.

One thing that did strike me as a bit odd is that although tea has a lot of significance in Japanese culture, that doesn't mean they sit and enjoy it for hours. Tea is meant to be drunk quickly. The low bowls mean it cools fast, so the recommended number of sips for one bowl is only 3-4! 

Tea ceremony - the man in the top left explained the ceremony to us before the woman came in and performed it for us.

Matcha, a type of green tea, is a big deal in Japan, and everything is matcha flavoured. I had at least one green tea ice cream cone a day, and brought back an entire box of green tea Kit Kats - so good!

Finally - Japan is one of the few places in the world outside of France that has Mariage Freres tea houses. We discovered this tea years ago in Stratford, Ontario, and then spent half of our honeymoon in Paris in Mariage Freres tea salons drinking entire pots of tea and relaxing.  We went to both Mariage Freres salons in Tokyo, and I stocked up on a few boxes of my favourites, as you cannot buy them in New Zealand.

The French approach to tea is the opposite of the Japanese - they like to sip at a a pot of tea for an entire hour. This is more my style...