February 9, 2008

Tokyo (JAPAN)

Welcoming my Father to Tokyo and Great Japanese Food

For the next couple of weeks my father will take a mini-tour of eastern Asia under the convenient guise of a "business trip." Although he does have business to conduct in Hong Kong and Singapore, his two night stop-over in Tokyo is purely to see the city I have come to call home, and to better understand why I cannot stop raving about it.

His flight landed at 14:30 at terminal two of Narita Airport, but it wasn't until my mobile phone rang that I realized he had already cleared customs. Apparently there is an "A" and a "B" exit from immigration, and this careless son didn't think to tell him which to walk through (there was a 50-50 chance I would guess correctly.) When I finally found him - taking him under my protective wing - we headed downstairs to the airport train station. Although he was understandably tired from the 15 hour flight, I figured it would be a better idea to take a local Sobu Express train (as opposed to the Airport Express) so he could start seeing the real Japan.

Bad idea. Not only did the local train take an hour and half, but many of the people on the train were not the Tokyo urbanites to whom I am accustomed. For example, ten minutes after I explained that Japanese people never eat, drink, or talk on cell phones while on trains, the sloppily dressed teenage girl across from us unwrapped an ice cream cone and began licking away. While this may sound trivial to many people who have not been to Japan, to see such blatant disregard for "the rules" was frustrating at best, infuriating at worst. Japanese style grows on you.

Thanks to a great discount for Sony employees (*ahem* Kumagai-san), my father, David-san, was able to stay in the luxurious Gotenyama Laforet Hotel, which is only a two minute walk from where I live. While David-san showered, I spent 15 minutes relaxing in the room's massage chair looking out over greater Tokyo from the 25th floor in kita-Shinagawa. Then, we sat in the downstairs lobby catching up while listening to a beautiful young Japanese woman playing the harp.

For dinner, Kumagai-san picked us up in a taxi and took us to an upscale restaurant in Nishi-Azabu, a trendy district known for high-end restaurants and shops tucked away on quiet streets. We were shown to a reserved table in the restaurant's only separate room, and left Kumagai-san in charge of selecting the dishes. While we were starting off with a round of Yebisu beer (my preference) and some kind of tooth-pick shaped potato crisps, our server brought out a selection of specialties for the evening. On one plate were three varieties of fresh sashimi (we decided to try them all), and on another, larger plate were four varieties of fish heads, shitaki mushrooms, and a section of marlin cut from the gill area. We decided to try the marlin, which would be grilled by a chef in the restaurant area and brought to our table later.

The first dish had the sashimi  -everything from tuna to sea urchin - and I demonstrated how the appropriate proportion of wasabi and shoyu should look. As we began whittling our way through the sashimi, two more dishes were delivered: Japanese scallions covered with a hint of crushed walnuts and the notorious fugu sashimi (blowfish, a deadly food that can only be prepared by licensed chefs, yet still causes numerous deaths every year.) This was a real treat getting to try fugu - my first such opportunity - but I still gave Kumagai-san a questioning look to make sure she trusted the restaurant! Biting into fugu is not as bad as jellyfish, which is too crunchy for my liking, and the taste comes alive better than any sashimi I have ever had (I did not add anything to the fugu dish.) While eating the sashimi we all toasted another "kanpei!" with a chilled glass of premium sake. Some varieties of sake are meant to be served cold while others are mean to be served warm, but overall good sake goes down far smoother than good vodka and still packs a fair punch.

Other dishes that were brought out for the evening included: (1) a nabe dish, which included Chinese cabbage, thinly sliced pork, and various vegetables, (2) a turtle-shell broth that doubles as "natural Viagra" (it works, I swear!), (3) the grilled Japanese marlin that melted before touching my palette, and (4) three different kinds of soba noodles (thick/rough, silky/"angel hair", and normal)  that we each dipped in a soy-based sauce, and (5) desert consisting of green sesame ice cream and assorted fruit.

Another memorable part of the meal was the second order of Japanese sake that was served in a traditional styled sake box (I found a photo on the internet, shown to the right.) The large bottle of sake (from Osaka) was poured into the box until it overflowed, running down all sides, and a dime-sized amount of salt was added to one side of the box. I moved a dash of salt to one corner of the box and licked it up with my tongue while I tilted the chilled sake into my mouth. It probably reminds most people of drinking tequila, but the big difference is that tequila makes you gag without the salt and salt just makes the sake taste that much better.

Toward the end of dinner Kumagai-san ran into two friends of hers - a Japanese man working as the HR head of Coca-Cola Japan and his American wife who works for De Beers - who took the time to engage me in a kind five minute chat. They were very charming, and Jennifer is a perfect role-model demonstrating perseverance pays off with the Japanese language!

By the time we dropped my father off at the hotel for the evening it was snowing heavily outside, and I was happy his first experience in Japan went so well!

**Today made me realize what an impossible city Tokyo is to navigate without outside help. The city is simply too big, moves too quickly, the Japanese language is the definite norm, and it would be nearly impossible to "hit the ground running" here. So, just call me up if you want to visit and you can be shown around by the legend himself!"