Hiroshima and Fukuoka

After Kyoto it was on to Hiroshima. I again didn’t have any time to write. This time, I clocked the train at running up to184 mph in between stations. That may not be entirely accurate, though, since the app on my cell phone was having a problem maintaining a signal, which interfered with its operation. While running at top speed, I really didn’t seem to have a cell signal, either. It seemed like that train was running so damn fast that my cell phone couldn’t keep up a stable signal.

While here, I of course hit the historical monuments and museum to the atomic bomb dropping. I then took a day trip outside the city to Miyajima island in Hiroshima bay. This was a pretty neat place as it had lots of interesting shrines and temples, the most notable of which is the floating Torii they have out in the bay (which I think became the picture of the trip). It also had a nice hike up at the top of the mountain.

The very best thing about Hiroshima, though, was the okomiyake. At first I almost didn’t get this for lunch, since I had just had one in Nara a few days earlier. I’m certainly glad I changed my mind. This one was less omelety, with less of an egg batter. The other notable difference is that it included fried noodles right in it, and went a lot heavier on the vegetables (cabbage and sprouts). In essence, it was a bunch of stir-fried veg and noodles, which a batter-based crepe top and an egg-based crepe bottom. This guy only applied a single sauce, and then you could apply your own mayonnaise and bonito flakes. While the okonomiyake in Nara was good, this one blew it away. It cost $7, was a massive pile of food, and was likely the single best thing I had eaten the whole trip.

One of my suspicions was also confirmed in Hiroshima. I went to an izakaya for dinner the first night, and towards the end of the night got into conversations which the two chefs. We eventually got around to talking about food, and they started asking what I liked and didn’t. As part of this, I realized they had all kinds of things in stock that didn’t appear on the English menu. This is something I had expected for a long time, that the English menu (if they have one) is just standard items that they always have in stock, and that the specials and possibly some of the more interesting stuff they presume a gaijin won’t ever be interested in doesn’t even make it into the menu. I can’t say I blame them for this. It appears that outside of Tokyo and Kyoto, even that places that are recommended in Lonely Planted often will only get 1-3 foreigners a night, so it’s probably not even worth investing the time to have to translate and update the foreign menu every time it changes.

I also have figured out why so often I have such a hard time finding specific places. Many of the restaurants from my guidebook, and most all the places I get sent to on personal recommendation, have neither English signage nor have the name of the place spelled in romaji (that’s Japanese written with that Latin alphabet). More often than not, it’s just all Kanji, Katakana, and Hirigana chicken-scratches. (Yes, the Japanese have four different writing systems including romaji. I’m amazed kinds here are able to read before they get into high school.) Usually Google Maps will get me to wherever I’m going when I travel. It must be said, though, that Google Maps definitely does not function as well in Japan as it does in all the other foreign countries I’ve been to in the last four years. It can usually get me within a block of the place, but after that, if there no English or romaji signage, I’m left going sign by sign and comparing chicken-scratches until I find what I’m looking for. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, maybe not so much. Do these two sets of characters look that same to you?

 

Me neither. I can see the resemblance, but I certainly wouldn't recognize these as being the same. I asked the guys in the izakaya about this, and they said it was because they are in different fonts. Uh-huh.

The last night in Hiroshima was probably the best, though. I went to a yakitori place and ended up meeting a local and his lady-friend visiting from Vietnam. Afterwards, they brought me to one of these small, hidden bars on the 4^th floor of an office building nearby where the proprietor made me some local “Hiroshima food”, which was essentially a sea-urchin and spinach bruschetta. With lots of sake. Good times.

I wrapped the trip up in Fukuoka. There’s not as much to see here in terms of big-ticket cultural sights, but it’s a large and very cosmopolitan city with great food, shopping, and good-looking women (or so I read). There’s some credibility there regarding the shopping, as I did pick myself up a nice new pair of shoes, which is something I’ve been looking for for quite some time now. The local specialty of tonkotsu ramen was pretty good, too, although neither of the two versions I had topped the ramen with pork belly I got in Tokyo.

I was only there a single evening, but it was certainly an eventful one. I went to a yakitori place on my last night, and as usual made some new Japanese friends and drank a little too much. After that, I checked out a local salsa club that wasn’t too far from my hotel. Not a bad scene, although it was pretty small, despite the fact that it was a Saturday night. Some of the dancers were pretty good, although the music was a little lame, and during the 5 songs they played while I was there they never played anything other than salsa.

Not feeling particularly motived to dance, I split. I did meet an American and an Italian expat on the way out. We struck up a conversation, and they took me out to a couple gaijin clubs in the area, which was kind of interesting. Both places were dives, and had your standard mix of meat-heads and drunk hos, just with a very international flavor. (I actually wasn’t aware Sweden had meat-heads.) Not being too particularly inspired by this place, either, I decided to pack it in and head back to the hotel at around 2:00 so I could get at least a little sleep, and maybe one last bowl of ramen, before my long flight they next day.

Overall, I have to say Japan has been one of the very best trips I’ve taken. It doesn’t have as much in the way of important historical sights or art as places like Italy, Spain, France, or England, and much of what is historical, such as the temples or shrines, are somewhat obtuse to me. However, this place is, bar none, the absolute greatest place in the world to go out and eat, drink, and be merry. I’ve never been to any place where the people are so friendly, and it’s what really makes the country special.

Kyoto, Nara, Ise, and the Redemption of Soba

I spent a whopping 8 nights and 7½  days in Kyoto, as it’s the cultural center of Japan. Similar to Tokyo, I was also planning on taking several days trips to take advantage of my unlimited-use rail pass and the incredible train system they have here.

Speaking of which, those Shinkansen bullet trains they have really do get you from point A to B in a big damn hurry. On my first Shinkensen leg from Tokyo to Nagoya en route to Takayama I actually didn’t seem like were going that fast. I found and installed a speedometer app on my cell phone, though, and found out that we were in fact cruising around at a top speed of 167 mph, which we were able to get to just a couple of minutes out of each station. I guess that shows you what I know.

At first I was very worried that Kyoto wouldn’t suit me real well. My first night there, I got some ramen that was tasty but definitely didn’t match the stuff I got in Tokyo (or even the two bowls I’ve gotten in Chicago, for that matter). Worse yet, I realized it was a chain restaurant (bleh!)! I got the sinking feeling that Kyoto was going to suffer badly from what I call the “Venitian disease”. This is what can afflict a city that is relatively small and gets so many tourists relative to its size that its local native charm is completely overwhelmed and driven so far underground that going there becomes more like a trip to Epcot Center than like a visit to a real, functioning community. Those of you that understand real regional Italian food and have been to Venice and seen all the soul-crushing picture menus printed in 6 languages with bullshit “Italian food” like spaghetti and meatballs, fettucine alfredo, and the cafeteria-style and location-inappropriate “ragu Bolognese” that is criminally served with spaghetti instead of tagliatelle will know what I’m talking about. In addition, the locals can become so jaded and callous to the hordes of tourists that as a foreigner it will be very difficult to have an interaction with locals that isn’t commercially motivated. Don’t get me wrong, the good food and authentic culture is there, it’s just that you have to get way off the beaten path and look really, really hard to find it. Throwing this on top of the massive language barrier that I have in Japan, which would add an additional level of complexity to finding the good stuff, I was beginning to worry.

Everything sorted out OK, though. The 2^nd night, with a little good advice, I was able to locate a very traditional izakaya near downtown and away from any tourist centers that turned out to be great. It was a typical dive with very good food, packed with locals. I didn’t end up getting in a conversation with any true Kyotoans, but I did end up eating and drinking with a Japanese businessman there for work from Tokyo. Being from Fukuoka originally, he was also able to give me advice on several good places to hit on my night there. The food at this izakaya was also very good. The big standout was the pork belly which was braised (apparently) with a mixture of soy sauce, mirin, sake, and ginger. It’s basically the same thing as Chinese red-cooked chicken. This may be a bit Kyoto thing, as I saw it on several menus around town.

I similarly had some great luck on night #3. This night I went to Ponto Cho, a street I was told has lots of traditional izakaya but also has a large quantity of other tourists. I found a place with no non-Japanese signage that was filled with what appeared to be locals and gave it a shot. As was common, initial reception was a little cool, but within about 40 minutes I was again swapping drinks and food with the guys sitting next to me. I ended up closing out the place with a couple young local guys, at which point they invited me to join them at a kyabakura. Kyabakura are a somewhat peculiar feature to Japanese culture. Known as “hostess clubs” in English, these are essentially bars where Japanese men go and pay pretty young women for very attentive conversation. You can see these in the big nightlife areas of any major city you go. Note: these are NOT strip clubs, and they are definitely not brothels. All the kyabajo (as they are called) are fully-dressed, and stay that way.

The concept of paying a 22 year-old girl to have a conversation with me seemed a little strange (normally, you’d have to pay ME to have a conversation with a typical 22 year-old), but I figured it would be an interesting cultural experience. It definitely exceeded my expectations. A couple of the girls actually spoke fair English and had sufficient life experience to hold a decent conversation for at least 15 minutes, at which point they would rotate out the girls. Nevertheless, my curiosity was satisfied pretty quickly, at which point I excused myself and one of my new buddies, gracious as always, insisted on covering my tab for me.

One great day trip I took while in Kyoto was in Nara, a former capital of Imperial Japan. Most of the sights there were pretty ho-hum, but the 15 meter-tall bronze Buddha statue housed in a gigantic old wooden temple building was pretty fantastic. What made the experience extra interesting was the active religious ceremony that was going on while I was there. I have no idea what it was, but there were hundreds of monks chanting and banging on drums, which made it pretty atmospheric even despite the hordes of Japanese tourists and school kids and other gaijin there checking out the statue.

The park that holds all the historic buildings in Nara is also populated with a herd of tame deer. It was mildly amusing to watch them descend on the young kids unfortunate enough to be holding food. The big downside, though, is that they were pooping all over the place. To my horror, I realized I was likely going to have to take my shoes off, in typical Japanese style, when I entered the shrine with the Buddha. Because things are so clean here this doesn’t bother me everywhere else, but I realize that if I do that here, I will almost certainly get some deer poop on my socks when walking around inside, as surely someone will have transferred at least a bit of the deer poop inside the building some way or another. I’ll then get deer poop in my shoes when I put them back on, which will then get transferred to all my other clean socks every time I put my shoes on for the rest of the trip. Having deer poop on my socks will inevitably lead to it being somehow transferred to my other clothing (say when I put on or take off my jeans), and even worse, getting it on myself, from which I transfer it to all my clothes as well as the other belongings. In essence, taking my shoes off in such close proximity to all the deer will surely result in absolutely everything I brought with me on the trip becoming enpoopified. As my mind is racing through the sequence of events that will result in me wallowing in deer poop the rest of my trip, I’m also deciding if I even want to go into the building at all. Maybe I could just check out the statue from the outside? I’m sure you can understand my relief when I found out upon reaching the building that you do not have to take off your shoes. Total enpoopification averted.

Aside from the Buddha and the deer excrement, the other notable thing about Nara was the okonomiyake lunch I got on the way out of town. Okonomiyake is often described as a big savory pancake (although in my opinion it’s more of an omelette) that contains all kinds of seafood, veggies, and meats, and is cooked up on a griddle in the table right in front of you, slathered with two different kinds of sauces, and drizzled with mayonaise. I opted for the “special” option, which included octopus, squid, shrimp, pork belly, and beef. You then dress it up as you like with shredded dried seaweed and katsuobushi flakes (that’s the dried, fermented, skipjack tuna flakes that are so common in Japanese cuisine). Yummy. Upon eating this, I realized that okonomiyake is basically the same thing at takoyaki, which is a little fried dumpling about the size of a golf ball with a piece of octopus in the middle. It seemed like the batter and the sauces were all the same, and that you even dress it up the same way. (I was familiar with takoyaki as we showed up with a box of takoyaki as our offering when we went to the tranny bar in Tokyo).

I was also able to check out Osaka one night while in Kyoto. It’s just 30 miles away, so it was easy to pop in on the train for dinner. Fortunately, there’s a good neighborhood filled with izakaya right by the train station. I hit a yakitori place and made a bunch of new friends, although this was more of a mixed international crowd with and Australian guy there for work, an English couple, and a couple locals.

I also took a side trip to Ise one day. This is the location of the most important Shinto Shrine in Japan, so I thought it may be a good thing to check out. While culturally important, there’s actually very little to see there. However, the good part is that the 5 hours I had to spend on the train allowed me to finally get caught up on my blog. I’ve been badly behind on writing on this trip for a couple reasons. First the trains get you to wherever you’re going so damn fast that the time on those is usually fully-spent making detailed plans for my next stop and catching up a bit on critical emails from work, and I don’t have any leftover time to blog. Second, I just don’t ever have that much down time. Usually during vacation, I’ll have some nights on a trip where I finish dinner early and don’t have something social to do that sounds particularly interesting, and as a result have time to get caught up on my blog. That’s hardly ever the case here. There’s always so much to eat and so many people to talk to, that I simply haven’t had the free time on this trip that I usually do.

Other tasty treats worth mentioning I had will in Kyoto include the Japanese fried chicken and marinated Saba fish I had on Kyabakura night. Also I got some grilled beef tongue I picked up at a tempura place one afternoon. I do love me some tongue. The tempura at this place didn’t impress me—I thought it was too greasy—but the beef tongue, served in little slices individually grilled on a big pile of shredded cabbage with some of what I believe was a slightly spicy mayonnaise was pretty awesome.

Soba has also redeemed itself in a major way. Every time I had eaten it so far, it was just plain noodles which you dip into sauce. It’s good, but nothing special. However, I finally got around to having a hot preparation, and it was awesome. This was soba noodles with in a hot, presumably dashi-based broth, with a couple pieces of the sweet-pickled oily fish which is so common here, a squid cake, and fixings. It seemed easy enough to make, I may actually try it myself some time at home if I can find the right recipe and source the necessary ingredients.

Takayama and Kanazawa

Until this trip I really had no idea how mountainous and heavily forested Japan is. I read in my guidebook during planning that part of the reason that the cities are so big and dense is because 3/4 of the country has so many mountains and woods that the land is essentially unusable. I got a big glimpse of this when heading to Matsumoto. Not even 40 minutes outside of Tokyo on the train, and we were already in mountainous country. It was the same thing on the way to Takayama. I had to switch trains in Nagoya, but after doing that and leaving Nagoya for Takayama, the mountains got big and woodsy really fast. It was an exceptionally beautiful part of the country. The icing on the cake is that up in the mountains the autumn colors had started to set in on the trees.

Takayama was a very appealing city. It's an attractive place and is much smaller and more livable that Tokyo. It's also got some historic sections that are very quaint, traditional, and filled up with sake breweries. Probably the very best thing about the town, though, was the beef. Takayama is in the Hida region, renowned for its Hida wagyu beef. It's basically the same stuff as the better-known (at least in the States) Kobe beef. It's nosebleed-expensive, but man is it ever good. I've had some domestic wagyu beef before, but it didn't compare to how tender and rich this stuff was. The preferred way to eat it was as yakiniku, which is a Japanese version of Korean-style barbecue. For anyone not familiar with Korean barbecue, they just drop a big pot of burning charcoal in a hole in the middle of your table, cover it with a grate, and then you DIY grill it right there, along with some vegetables and other accompaniments. Being Japanese instead of Korean, you accessorize it differently and there are different condiments (no kimchi, use soy sauce and things like wasabi and sansho pepper, etc.). My preference was with just a touch of soy and wasabi. The beef was so incredibly rich it really didn't need much of anything. It's a good thing that it's so rich, though, as I can’t afford very much. It seems that the going rate for the stuff seemed to be about 1400 yen per 100 grams for what I think was meat from what we would call the rib eye (that works out to roughly $60 per lb, BTW).

Along with the beef, the mountain apples were also really good. They’re almost too big to eat easily out of hand, many being the size of a softball, but they were very good. This is a puzzling thing I’ve noticed about Japan—most things are modestly proportioned, be it meal portions, people, bars, restaurants, or houses, but all the fruit here is absolutely enormous. The apples are gigantic, I’ve seen Asian pears (much more flavorful, tender, and juicy than the sad Asian pears we get in the states, BTW) the size of 16-inch softballs, grapes are typically larger than ping-pong balls, and the figs look like they weigh about a quarter lb each.

After Takayama I hit Kanazawa. I promptly went from eating beef at nearly every meal to living off of nothing by fish. Kanazawa is supposedly a great place for seafood, so I was taking every opportunity to indulge in the local specialties. I had set myself up with a hotel right across the street from the city market, which was a great move. There was one sushi place there that opens very early which I was able to hit for breakfast on both days. The first day I got a spectacular-looking sushi bowl, which was basically a big pile of sashimi on a bowl of rice. All the fish was incredibly fresh, and the presentation was certainly top-notch, including a couple head-on raw shrimp and a scallop shell, but while good it didn't wow me and certainly didn't rate up to my market sushi experience in Tokyo. Wondering if it was the preparation, I got the sushi plate the next day, where they fully prep everything as nigiri sushi. It was again a nice meal, but I similarly wasn't wowed. I actually thought the chef put way too much wasabi in each piece. Still for the measly $28 I spent on the plate, it was quite a satisfying breakfast.

The better sushi I had in Kanazawa was for lunch on the 2nd day, where I went to a more widely-lauded sushi place. This was definitely a step up from the breakfast crowd, and excellent sushi, but it nevertheless didn't quite meet expectations. Granted, my expectations were probably too high. I went in expecting to have my mind blown, and while it was a great sushi meal, and a fantastic value, the mind was still unblown at the end of the meal.

Having come here, I’ve got a much better appreciation for the artistry in making sushi. At both of these places in Kanazawa, the fish was extraordinarily fresh and of good quality, but the end product, while very good, wasn’t phenomenal, and didn’t have the little touches that really put the sushi at Tsukiji market in Tokyo over the top. One other thing I’d note is that I’m feeling pretty good about the domestic sushi we can get. If you go to a top-tier place in the States, I feel the sushi is every bit as good as most everything I’ve gotten here at restaurants that are highly-regarded by the locals. Granted, for comparable quality I think we need to pay 2-3 times as much, but if you’re a sushi freak, you can take solace in the notion that you really can get the good stuff in the States.

Kanazawa was also a great little city. People were, again, extraordinarily friendly, and I had a fantastic time at the izakaya I went to my first night there. I’m noticing a recurring pattern at all these little izakaya I go to. The initial reception I get can come off as being a little bit cool and that it appears that they may not be excited about the idea of having a lone, overgrown (by their standards) gaijin in the place. They usually warm up pretty quickly, though. My best guess is that once I’m able to demonstrate that I know how to use chopsticks properly, have a basic understanding of Japanese dining etiquette, and know at least a little Japanese, they know they’re not going to be stuck with someone who is going to ruin the vibe of the place.

The market in Kanazawa was amazing. I think I spent at least 6 hours there over my two days walking around and talking to vendors, sampling stuff, eating grilled scallops and sea snails right out of the shell, and taking photos. The most dramatic thing in the market was the freakishly large crabs and maitake mushrooms they had everywhere. Seeing this I’m thinking, “MMmmmmm, good soup”, so I figured I needed to go out of oden my 2nd night there. You can think of oden as basically a Japanese take on pot au feu where all kinds of proteins, starches, and veggies are boiled together and you’re served a plate of the pickings you want with some of the broth and a hit of outrageously spicy Chinese mustard. I went to the highly-recommended oden place in town, though, and no crabs or maitakes to be seen. The white-shelled sea snails (baigai) and other shellfish seemed to be the big thing, but no crabs. Granted, the fact that the 2 foot long crabs I saw in the market were being sold for between $60 to $100 each might have priced them out for such a simple dish like oden. Ditto for the maitakes, which you can think of as a Japanese equivalent to porcinis, and are priced accordingly. In retrospect, I think I needed to find a place that was serving nabemono (Japanese hot pot) rather than oden, but at the time I really didn’t understand the difference.


At the market I encountered quite a few things that were challenging even for my palette. One or two of these was even included in the omakase meal I got at the izakaya my first night there. There’s one set of vendors in particular that sells all these strange-looking vats of soupy seafood stuff at the market. I’m not sure what you’d call this stuff collectively, so I simply refer to it henceforth as the “freaky shit” (FS). A lot of it appears to be uncooked squid or cuttlefish products. The most common are these tiny little whole, uncooked baby squid which I’m guessing have just been marinated in soy sauce for a while. I think the salt in the soy draws out their own juices, so what you’re left with is this dark brown semi-gelatinous, mucousy soup of little baby squids. I had gotten a small plate of this at the izakaya the night before, and I must admit I was choking it down. Ryan no likey. I think I do prefer it to the other signature product at the FS table, though. It was difficult to understand the full explanation as the FS guy’s English was pretty lousy and we were mostly communicating with sign language, but my best understanding on this one is that it’s long, cut-up pieces of raw squid (they kind of resemble short, fat noodles) marinated in a reddish-pink sauce that I believe is all the guts, brains, and contents of the digestive tracks of the squid, presumably minus the ink sacks (otherwise it would be black). Again, Ryan no likely.

There were many other additional vats of gooey, soupy things at the FS table, but the lone other thing I could identify was some kind of raw squid product where the squid were marinated in their own ink. “Aha! This is for me”, I thought, as I love cooking with cuttlefish ink and I’m perfectly fine with raw squid, so long as it’s not swimming around in a soupy mass of its own entrails. They guy gave me a sample, and while I wasn’t choking it down like the baby squid marinated in its own bodily mucous, I didn’t exactly ask for seconds.

Tokyo, Nikko, Matsumoto, and Kamakura

Tokyo was fantastic. Much of the city is exactly as I expected: flashing lights everywhere, hordes of people every waking hour of the day, and a constant hum of activity. And the food is absolutely awesome. All of it. I had pretty high expectations coming in, and it’s easily met them, and then some. The food scene got off to a good start when I went to the Tsukiji fish market my first day in. I wasn’t planning on this, as I thought I’d need to rest up for a couple days after my extremely long flight. Tsukiji is a wholesale fish market, not a consumer market, so all the action happens when most normal people are sleeping. The main event at the market is the tuna auction that occurs every morning where they auction off all the 800 lb fish they caught the previous day for tens of thousands of dollars each. The rub here is that the auction starts at 5:30, they only allow 120 people to attend each day, and it’s first-come-first-serve for tickets. I didn’t expect to be able to drag myself out of bed in time my first day there for this. My jet lag was a lot more severe than I expected, though, and I found myself awake and staring at the ceiling at 3:00 AM that first morning after just 4 hours of sleep, so I figured I might was well get out of bed and try to hit the tuna auction the first day. After cleaning up and catching a $40 taxi to the market, I was able to arrive at 4:30, at which point I was told all the tickets had sold out 15 minutes ago.

At first I wasn’t sure what they hell I’d do for the next 4½ hours until the main part of the market opened up to the public for browsing (tourists aren’t allowed in until 9:00 AM). However, I quickly realized that if I wanted to enjoy the other quintessential Tokyo experience the market had to offer, getting outrageously fresh sushi from one of the two hot sushi bars located inside the market, I’d have to get my ass in line. I found my way over to the two places with some new friends I met that also couldn’t get in to the tuna auction, and we queued up. It actually appeared like the timing would work out well, as we were told it would be a 3-hour wait to get into the 12-seat place we wanted.

Normally, even my own patience and desire for great sushi would be put to the test by a wait that long, but since I had nothing else to do I figured, why  not? It actually ended up being a great experience. I got in a few great conversations with an interesting and international crowd (made new friends from Singapore, Taiwan, Colombia, Portland, and LA in that time), and the sushi was definitely some of the best I’ve ever had. It was certainly the freshest, all of it having been hauled out of the water in the past 24 hours. One piece, the red clam I got, was actually still alive and moving around on its little brick of nigiri rice when I ate him.

In addition to my early-morning sushi breakfast I got at the market, I was also able to score the high-end sushi blow-out I was hoping to do in Tokyo. I was able to grab a reservation at a two-star Michelin joint in the fancy Rippongi Hills district. Granted, it was at noon on a Sunday, but beggars can’t be choosers. I think we can call this the gaijin seating, as everyone there was a foreigner. My overall reaction: meh. It was awfully good, but relative to the substantial amount of money I dropped, I was underwhelmed. It was also extremely rushed. The entire meal lasted for only 36 minutes. I could understand that if I were at the dive at the market with a line of people around the corner waiting to get in, but I certainly don’t expect that from a place with two Michelin stars. I think I’d rather get back in line at the market if I wanted more sushi.

I actually realized on the train out of town that in the 8 nights and 7 days I spent in Tokyo, those were the only two times I had a sushi meal. Yes, there’s a lot more to Japanese cuisine than just sushi. (There were a couple other times where a single serving of sushi was a part of a much larger meal, but those really don’t count.) One of the more notable things I was eating instead of sushi was the ramen. I had three different bowls of ramen I can remember, all of which were great. No, these are not the sad, little re-heated bricks of plastic you ate when you were in college. Real ramen has hand-made, fresh egg noodles, and is basically a noodle soup with an incredibly rich broth, usually made with a combination of meat (often pork) and seafood, and has all kinds of extra goodies in there like some veg, mushrooms, big chunks of pork, eggs that were hard-boiled in the broth (much better than you think), etc.

Speaking of noodles, I also had an udon meal and soba noodles a couple of times, as well. These are fine, but definitely don’t turn my crank like the ramen does. I think I have to try udon a few more times, though. Part of the problem with udon may be that I’m not sufficiently skilled at accessorizing the noodles and applying condiments. Another honorable-mention, something that is good, but doesn’t keep me up at night thinking about my next score, is the tonkatsu. This is a pork-cutlet that’s breaded with panko and deed-fried, and then served with a pile of crispy cabbage. Definitely a very satisfying meal, but not something I get massive cravings for.

What was hands-down the greatest meal I had, though, and was quite possibly one of the best vacation experiences in general that I’ve ever had, was the yakitori place I went to that was featured on Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations”. I had already been to one yakitori place (that’s grilled chicken on skewers, BTW), which was very tasty and a lot of fun, but I wanted to see how good this stuff could get, so I hunted down this place from the show. It took a lot of research and some hoofing, as it’s not even in Tokyo proper. I actually had to take the subway to transfer to a private rail line to get way out in the suburbs to find this place. But man, was it ever worth it. The chef breaks down whole chickens grilling them right to order. The chicken is incredibly fresh, which it better be, because some of the items are served medium rare, rare, or even just seared with the entire interior completely raw much like you would do with a high-quality tuna steak. Yes, we’re talking about chicken here. Unlike most yakitori places, he also uses no sauce whatsoever. It’s just chicken, a little salt, and the grill. And holy crap, was it fantastic. I got the omakase, which included skewers of your standard breast with Japanese leeks (like a scallion), skin, medium-rare thigh, and if I recall correctly, cartilage. He also threw in a liver for me since I was asking him about it when I saw him cooking one. The best part was the experience, though. I had called ahead for a reservation, and he sat me right in front of where he was cooking so I could watch the artist in action. Bear in mind, this is a guy that is 68 years old, and has done absolutely nothing aside from grill chicken for the past 40 years. He doesn’t cook steaks, he doesn’t make soups, he doesn’t prepare vegetables. He grills chickens, full stop. Given the focus, I think he’s achieved chicken-grilling perfection. The guy is an outright artist at breaking down his birds, and it was a lot of fun to watch. He’s also one of the friendliest guys I’ve ever met, and was talking and joking around with me all night. The tiny little place became an outright party pretty early into the evening. After 3 bottles of sake, 5 plum wine and brandy cocktails, a lb of chicken, and another lb of grill smoke absorbed into my clothes, I realized I had been there 4 ½ hours and that the train system was going to be shutting down in 15 minutes. I paid the bill, staggered to the station, and somehow was able to catch a train back into the city, making what I think was likely the very last connection to get me home. Good times. After making it back to the hotel, I collapsed on the bed, and woke up 5 hours later, still partially drunk, all the lights on, in my clothes and with my contacts in, still reeking of that delicious chicken. I realized then just how bad my jet leg still was at that moment when after a night like that I still couldn’t sleep past 6:00 in the morning despite having been in the country for a full 6 days.

One other night I was able to grab something closely related to yakitori called horimonyaki. This time you’re grilling beef organs instead of chicken parts. Reading the menu was certainly entertaining. There were things on the menu such as cervical canal, stomach, testicles (of course), several different types of intestine (upper, lower, etc.), rectum (!!!!!), and spinal cord. Pretty tasty. I didn’t ask if they had any rectum in that night, though.

In my estimation I think Japan has supplanted Italy as the best single place in the world to eat. What puts them over the top is the bento boxes. These are essentially pre-prepared, cold box lunches. It’s unbelievable how good some of these $10 take-out boxes can be. The very best ones are available in department stores or other high-end markets near the train station. I’ve never actually looked forward to the opportunity to get a boxed lunch before. When it comes to food, the Japanese simply do not screw around.

A couple other interesting things about Japan. First, there are no trash cans. Actually, it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say there are none, but suffice it to say they are pretty thin on the ground. Even in places like train stations and public parks I’m often completely unable to find a trash can anywhere. This apparently isn’t a problem, though, because there is also no trash. None. Anywhere. Ever. Apparently the system works, although sometimes it’s annoying to have to carry my trash around with me for 2 hours until I get back to the hotel and can dump it in the trash can in my room.

People are also extremely friendly here. I’ve never been anywhere where the locals were so open to striking up a conversation with a lone traveler, often a lengthy one where we end up hanging out and drinking for an hour or two. The highlight here was the gang I met at the first yakitori place I went to. We chatted through our chicken, sharing food and drinks. Afterwards, they (a group of office workers consisting of two women and one guy) invited me out to a “gay bar”. We went, and the gay bar turned out to be one of the minuscule little Tokyo bars that only seat 4-6 people in total, we were the only guests (no more would fit), and what made it gay was the fact that that the hostess was an aging drag-queen that had been on Japanese television back in the 60s.

Yes, the toilets are all as fancy and elaborate as the stereotype. At the hotel I was staying at in Tokyo I popped into one of the nicer, more expensive empty rooms which was left open one day, and the toilet looked more like an interstellar spacecraft than something you take a piss in. It also had a stainless-steel mounted wall panel with more controls on it than a Boeing 777. The toilet in my room is a little more basic, although I do have to say the heated seat is a nice touch. Even public toilets in restaurants and parks even have extra bells and whistles. You do find some squatty-pottys at dive restaurants and junkier some public locations, though, which I find kind of amusing. You either get a fancy toilet with at least some extra functions, or have to squat—you never get the in-between, i.e. just a regular walking-around typical North American toilet.

While the Japanese are huge into the toilet technology, the same cannot be said for the hand-drying tech. Many, many places, even in fairly decent restaurants, provide nothing for you to dry your hands. No paper towels, no hand dryers, nothing. It’s a little strange to go to a bathroom that has a bunch of fancy toilets and stalls but then leaves you drying your hand on your pants as you walk out.

While in Tokyo I made a couple side trips. I’m doing many day-trips because the train system is so fantastic that it makes is very easy to visit other cities from a central home base. The first was to Nikko. I checked out some temples, did some hiking, was interviewed by a Japanese television crew, and generally spent the day getting rained on. What made the day, though, was that I was able to score an old-school kaiseki meal when I was there. The so-called restaurant was in the middle of this perfect little Japanese garden, and it was precisely the kind of meal I really wanted to have at least one of, but wasn’t sure I’d be able to get while here. The meal also allowed me to scratch off a couple additional things off my must-eat list, including matsutake mushrooms and fugu (pufferfish). Another side trip was to Matsumoto where I checked out the castle, but was annoyed because I didn’t plan correctly and wasn’t sufficiently well-fed. The last big side trip was to Kamakura where I spent the day checking out temples (and also got a good meal out of it).