We ate three tiny, geometrically engineered appetizers, including a perfect cube of kabocha squash-flavored fish cake and an octopus salad consisting of one tiny piece of octopus brushed with a plum d...
We did go to a skeezy yakitori place, however, which is where Iris discovered , chicken tail, the fattest, juiciest bit of the chicken, and the best to grill on a stick and brush with sweetened soy sa...
When you visit Gindaco, spend some time watching the cooks make takoyaki before ordering, because it's an amazing free show. The shop has an industrial-sized takoyaki griddle with dozens of hot cast i...
Now, back to Sapporo-ya. The place is deep enough below street level that the windows let in no natural light; harsh fluorescent lamps made everyone look ill. The walls are greenish-yellow. If you are...
In the U.S., to have a personal relationship with a Japanese chef across the counter, you have to go for sushi. I enjoy sitting at a sushi bar, but there is always the whiff of haute cuisine in the ai...
In Tokyo, ramen is a playground for the culinary imagination. As long as the dish contains thin wheat noodles, it's ramen. In fact, there's a literal ramen playground called Tokyo Ramen Street in the...
At Iris's direction, we enjoyed all sorts of skewered bits. While most yakitori places serve various cuts of chicken and a few vegetables, the menu at Yakitorino was all over the place, and nearly eve...
The hot case at a kombini features tonkatsu, fried chicken, (a breaded hamburger patty), Chinese pork buns, potato croquettes, and seafood items such as breaded squid legs or oysters. In a bit of int...
Before heading to our respective baths, Laurie, Iris, and I went to the food court and got lunch. I loved this food court, not because the food was especially good (although it was seventeen times bet...
For my first home-cooked meal in Tokyo, I took an assortment of beautiful Japanese ingredients and did what came naturally: I made Chinese food. I stir-fried some beautifully marbled (Berkshire breed...
White bread in Japan is a steroidal megaloaf called . Brioche-like and great for toasting, shokupan is sold in bags of four, six, or eight perfectly square slices, without heels. Where do the heels go...
Tokyo boasts similar food theme parks devoted to ramen, gyōza, ice cream, and desserts. If you don't like takoyaki, you're not entirely out of luck: the stand we visited, Aizuya, also offers . You wou...
The ubiquity of great food in Tokyo is beyond imagination. It's not just that I'm interested in food and pay close attention to restaurants and takeout shops, although that's true. In Tokyo, great foo...
The most obvious difference between Japanese and American ice cream bars is that if the Japanese bar promises something crispy, it will damn well be crispy. The Haagen-Dazs Crispy Sandwich, for exampl...
Something about Tokyo's exuberant modernism made Iris and me feel like the city existed just to make us happy: the waving cats seemed to whisper. Iris and I came back with a list of Tokyo attraction...
So what does matcha taste like, if you've never had it? It's commonly described as tasting green, which is true, albeit begging the question. Good matcha is naturally very sweet, a plant sweetness qui...
Yōshoku is the Japanese take on Western foods; much of it was created during the Meiji period (1868-1912), when, after centuries of isolation, Japan began importing goods and ideas from the outside wo...
If a Tokyoite knows anything about Nakano, it's likely to be Nakano Broadway, a shopping mall with several floors devoted to Japanese comics (manga) and animation (anime). It is geek central. I found...
Buying fish in the supermarket in Japan is a delight, even if the fish is displayed in styrofoam trays, as it is at Life. The most common supermarket fish, mackerel, also happens to be my favorite, an...
But Tokyo offers cat cafes, a commercial solution to the problem of wanting to commune with cats but being unwilling or unable to have one at home.Iris's favorite cat cafe is Nekorobi, in the Ikebukur...
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