Tokyo Blog, Tokyo Story
The blog of Stephen David Smith, Tokyo, Japan 2012
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Yebisu Premium Black Beer
I like trying the different beers on offer in Japan, and I’ve decided to start reviewing them, which gives me a good excuse to buy beer. This one is the Yebisu breweries answer to stout, and is actually pretty good (as are most Japanese beers). The taste is bitter, like Guiness, but without the smoothness. It retains the sharpness of normal lager beer, but has the same rich flavour you normally get with a stout. The spiel on the can reads, “This premium black beer is brewed using dark roasted malt and caramel malt in good balance, and fine malt and select hops for a rich aroma and hearty roasted flavour”. I grabbed it from the chiller in my local 7-Eleven on the way home from work, and accompanied by grilled cuttlefish with mayo, a nikuman (pork bun), and a pack of calbee cheese snacks, it definitely hit the spot (I bought two cans to be sure).
Final Fantasy Potion
I was in the popular convenience store AMPM today, when I saw the coolest soft drink idea ever. Final Fantasy potions! I didn’t have my camera so I couldn’t take a picture, but a quick search unearthed this advert now airing on TV. Power up!
Tommy Lee Jones for Suntory Boss
Tommy Lee Jones has been appearing in adverts for Suntory’s Boss canned coffee for a while now, and his face is all over the city. Further more, he’s created ads for TV which are now available for viewing on YouTube! Please have a look:
Jones working at a host club
Jones at a gyudon restaurant
Jones working at a warehouse
Jones working at a supermarket
Jones working at a delivery company
Jones working at a delivery company II
Jones working at a karaoke club
Oh and by the way, Jones plays the part of an alien visiting Earth, which would explain a lot of the unusual abilities he has (teleportation, the ability to close his ears, etc.).
It’s Suntory time.
UPDATE: I found some more that I forgot to add:
Jones hands out stuff on the streets of Tokyo
Jones as airport security
Jones leaves Earth then comes back
Jones works at a hot spring
Jones hangs out in Akihabara
Jones works on a rice farm
Jones appears in a samurai flick
Jones helps construct a house
Jones joins a tunneling squad
Culinary Wrongdoings
It wasn’t so long ago now that I went against my own morals in the pursuit of expanding my horizons. I ate horse. Raw.
I feel bad about it, because I thought humans and horses had come to some sort of an arrangement, “I’ll let you ride me, and I’ll pull stuff around for you, providing you don’t eat me”. In Japan, they call a dish consisting of raw horsemeat, ‘Basashii’. Actually, I’d already eaten canned horse when I was in Kusatsu in Gunma prefecture, but eating it raw turned my stomach a bit. The flavour was OK, a little bit gamey with a taste of iron, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what it was I was eating. The thing that made me eat it was the prospect of being able to say I’d eaten raw horse to my friends and family back home. I don’t think it’s widely known that the Japanese eat horses. Next time someone offers it to me, I’m going to have to say “nay”.
Ootoya!
A food post was long overdue, I thought, and on that topic I have something to talk about. Having been in Tokyo for 7 months now, I was definitely beginning to tire of eating ramen, tenpura, donburi, etc. People abroad sometimes share the notion that everything you can eat in Japan is good for you. This is true to an extent, but most of the cheap, fast food, while better than a Mickey-D’s or a KFC, is still going to shorten your life if you eat it too often. Really good, healthy traditional Japanese dishes, you can make at home, or treat yourself to at one of Tokyo’s more expensive, formal eateries.
Unless of course you go to my new favourite restaurant chain, Ootoya. The food is excellent and cheap. What’s more it’s healthy! I usually go in of a weekend, normally on a Sunday to unwind. The interiors are laid back and tasteful (at least they are at the Okachimachi retaurant where I tend to go), and they play some cool jazz music. Water is free, like most places, and you get a complementary cup of tea for after your meal.
I tend to go for the yaki saba (grilled mackerel) and it’s as good as you could get anywhere. In fact, it’s the best cooked mackerel I’ve ever had, full stop. I also had another yaki sakana dish in the past, although I’m not sure what variety it was, but again, it was really good. I normally get the teishoku format (set meal), which you get on a tray accompanied by a bowl of rice, tsukemono (japanese pickles), and a bowl of miso soup. It has to be said, the miso is one of the best I’ve had in Japan, and I love miso soup, so that keeps me going back.
Japanese Food at the Izakaya
Izakaya are a highlight of living in Japan. We went to one the other day and the food was nice, and not really that expensive. We had a boat-load of Sashimi to start with and beers, followed by Tempura. Then a woman came into the private room you get for your group, and showed us the freshest fish they had in stock. They were laid out on a tray made from woven straw and each fish had a small wooden sign with the name written on it. We couldn’t read the names so we just chose a good looking one and asked to have it poached in some sort of soup. You can ask to have it prepared in a few ways, like stir-fry or grilled. When it came it was the nicest fish I’d ever had but wasn’t big enough for everyone to share really. In Japan it’s customary to eat the soft part of the fish’s eye (avoiding eating the eyeball), so I did and it was horrible, but it’s supposed to be good for the brain so I washed it down with beer. We chased this with posh Sake which you drink from a glass placed in a small open top box (like a square cup), and the Sake is made to overflow the glass and run into the cup around it. This means that when you start to drink you have to leave the glass on the table and drink the first bit out from there. Then, after, you use the contents of the square box to top the glass up.
We also ordered Udon and squid ink risotto and maybe something else, I can’t remember. Came to about £70 for three people.
Genki Drinks
When I arrived in Tokyo, not so long ago, one of the things I noticed were whole shops dedicated to the sale of small bottles, the contents of which I wasn’t sure about. Whilst watching TV, I noticed the ads that were showing this stuff, and realised that they’re somewhere between a herbal remedy and an energy drink. The bottles they come in are often made of brown glass, which gives them the appearance of a bottle of medicine (which I’m sure is intentional). They are targeted mainly at the salaryman, banking on the fact that these guys will be burned out, stressed out and in need of something to give them a ‘boost’, or just keep them alive for one more working day. They normally contain a mix of vitamins and traditional chinese herbal supplements, but also sometimes contain such things as viper tincture or other exotic extracts believed to increase virility. You can get one variety that’s a massive hit of garlic, and another which is supposed to enable you to consume more alcohol. I can’t read everything written on the bottles, but I fully intend to buy some for experimentation. I’ve never tried having 4000 times the RDA of a vitamin before, and really want to see what happens.
Matsuya & Yoshinoya
When it comes to Japanese fast food, there are so many restaurants you could mention, but the two that stand out as the most ubiquitous and the most iconic, are Matsuya and Yoshinoya. I go to both often, Matsuya more than Yoshi’s I would say, but only because Matsuya is closer to where I live. Both restaurants mainly serve Donburi (a bowl of rice with food on top), which often include thinly sliced pork or beef, wakame (seaweed), kim chee (korean spiced cabbage), and sometimes a (very) soft poached egg.
Personally, I love this kind of Donburi, and you can get one for between £2 – £3. Not only does this make it cheaper than a UK fast food restaurant (like McDonalds or Burger King), but also a million times healthier. You could probably eat this stuff for every meal, Supersize Me-style, and not suffer too badly from it, and have a good time doing it!
Writing this has got me in the mood for Donburi, so I’m going to finish up here and then go to the Naka-Okachimachi branch tout de suite!
Tattoritan
A Korean friend showed us how to make this. In typical Korean fashion, it’s really hot. It’s like a stew consisting of chillies, mushroom powder, potato, leek, chicken thighs, liver, shiitake mushrooms and other things. Sounds simple, but it is really nice! I thought I’d put it on here to form the first post in the thus-far neglected food section. Really this section should be packed with stories, as it’s what I’ve enjoyed most about Tokyo so far.
