Today we started our day off quite late to have a rest in the morning. I guess you could say we had sushi for brunch as that was the first place we went to. Oh gosh it was delicious, I haven’t had chuu toro in my stomach for 4 years and gosh do I miss it!
We explored the fish markets and other goods such as dried things, beans, egg delicacies, chopsticks and crockery etc. James ended up even buying a Japanese chef knife! He enjoys cooking and knives a lot more than I ever will.
Round 1 of chuu toro, oo toro and seared toro. That’s basically middle fat tuna, biggest fat tuna and seared biggest amount of fat tuna. We ate so much of our money in 10 minutes.
Round two. This chef was a lot more giving. We were grateful.
Filled the rest of our stomachs with the cheaper stuff.. James had prawn and salmon and I had ikura (salmon roe) and a salmon too. We also got raw horse meat to share… GROSS. It wasn’t appealing to us but we thought there should be a first for everything. Surprisingly it felt like fish in terms of texture, but it definitely tasted almost a little gamy and bitter. Never ordering that again! Gross. I feel gross thinking I ate a horseeeee, I’m so sorry!!!
Before the bite…
Massive blue fin tuna head. It’s so confronting when you see it like that. It’s easy to be ignorant about what we put into our stomachs because it is so delicious. But after eating my lunch and walking out to see that like some sort of gravestone crucifix, it made me remember where that delicious delicacy just came from. Then I kinda felt bad. Then I touched its skin and thought it felt like a dolphin. Then I went back to feeling bad. Why do you have to taste so good?
James getting his Japanese chef knife with a beautiful local wood handle and horn inlay angled by this massive stone.
Then refining the point with finer stones, and even more finer, and finder.. until the knife was super sharp, smooth and shiny.
He conditioned and polished it with vegetable oil and wrapped it up for us. I wonder how many knives he screwed up before he got to be awesome at sharpening and getting the angle right… without hurting himself too.
Decided we’d walk in the light rain to Ginza so we passed Kabukiza on the way. You might remember that I had been around this way when I had my Tsukiji gig.
James & sake casings
The start of Ginza
We then ate a matcha green tea mochi.. I don’t know what the yellow thing inside of it was… I’ve had it before but I wasn’t a huge fan. I just love the mochi texture though.
Then we spent the next 2.5 hours in 12 levels of Uniqlo. CRAZY… and we also went crazy buying up basics and staples. So much cheaper than Australia and for the quality too!
They were doing a range of souvenir T-shirts and I found this one haha!
James went nuts trying on chino pants, T-shirts, cargos, jumpers, cardigans, jackets lalalalala… I ended up setting camp in the corner of his changing room and could’ve had a nap.
After a long day at Ginza and marching through the many department stores – we hunted down a Tonkatsu restaurant to fulfill our cravings. This one was a much more gourmet restaurant at double the price of what we normally spend on Tonkatsu here but it was delicious. It’s part of the Wako chain (KEITEI) that is very well known for their Tonkatsu in Japan. I kept hearing about it so I thought I should do it once.
We got creeped out by some of the pickles. Some of the textures just weirded my foreign tongue out.. slimy and crunchy pink pickly thing was not my jam. Otherwise everything else was absolutely spot on delicious. I was stuffed to the brim by the end of the meal.
After dinner we caught the train to Jiyugaoka to meet up with my dad, crazy Uncle Steve (haha) and friends for drinks at Clann an Irish Bar. It’s was a funny group of people of all nations and all ages (oldest was 73 and youngest was us at 22)! There I saw the two new French friends (Gael and Flaminia) from my Shinjuku gig and Kei whom I met at my Ebisu gig. I also invited along my old high school mate Ryohei who was on exchange to Brisbane for a year, 8 years ago. I was 14 then and we got to be very good friends. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen him for 8 years! Reuniting with such an old friend was so great.
It was Gael’s birthday at midnight so the girls and I ran to Family Mart to make a make shift cake.. I also quickly googled how to sing Happy Birthday in French so we could surprise him. We even bought those pathetic streamer popper things.
It was a fun night! So much so that we JUST made the very last train of the night and had to walk home from Nakameguro for about 20 or so minutes.
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