Japan Trip: Food

Last weekend I went to visit my good friend Tak and his wife Hitomi in Tokyo. It was a wonderful trip that we packed a lot into in 72 short hours. One of the highlights of the trip was all of the delicious Japanese food that I had while I was there. The first day Tak and I went on a tour of the city and we got sushi for lunch in the Asakusa area of town. We had several different kinds of fish as well as squid and octopus. That evening Tak cooked a hoemade Japanese meal. It was very tasty and challenged my chopstick skills.

Sushi

Miso soup, rice, meat with sweet potatoes and pickled vegetables

On Friday night we headed up to Tak's cabin near Mount Fuji. The next morning the three of us went to a German bakery and picked up some delicious pastries and breads for breakfast. This breakfast was also my first experience ever eating a fried egg with chopsticks. It went surprisingly well, the trick is to just eat it in one mouthful.

German pastry and fried egg breakfast

Hotpot

Saturday night was one of the most memorable meals of the trip. We had Japanese hotpot with mushrooms, leafy greens, seafood, thinly sliced beef, dicon and leeks. The veggies and meat are cooked in a pot of simmering broth in the centre of the table. Then you pick the food out of the pot using chopsticks, dip it in ponzu (a sour soysauce-like substance) and eat it. It was a really fun and social meal, it lasted for a good three hours, followed by sake (rice wine) and green tea.

 

 

Fruit tea at a cafe in the mountains

Tempura

The final night the three of us went over to Tak's parents house and had dinner with his family and Hitomi's family. We had tempura shrimp, sweet potato, broccoli, leafy green and mushrooms. We also had takoyaki. They are balls of a pancake-like batter with octopus, cabbage, leeks and pink ginger inside. They are cooked in the middle of the table and everybody helps to put the fillings in and flip them over when one side it cooked. It was a delicious end to a weekend filed with tasty Japanese food. I'll definitely need to take a trip to the T&T Asian Grocey store when I get home so that I can try and recreate these meals.

Takuyaki