Itadakimasu Part One

We recently spent two weeks in Japan mostly eating traditional Japanese food in ryokan and minshuku.  As you know I love food and I especially love food from the sea which is the mainstay of the Japanese table.  However I was a little anxious because I was not fond of noodles, tofu or miso soup which I knew would also be on the table.  It was with some trepidation that I approached our initial meals however I found the food absolutely wonderful.  I am not really any fonder of noodles but made so many new food friends and I have even been experimenting with Japanese food at home.   But that is another story.  First I want to tell you about eating in Japan - traditional and modern.
The first two meals we ate in Tokyo were sushi.  We then didn't really come across sushi again until our last day in Arashiyama, a short train journey from Kyoto.
When we arrived in Tokyo early evening, tired and overwhelmed by the heat and humidity we found our way to Tsukiji Tama Sushi a few minutes from our hotel.  We could not have made a better choice.  We ordered a dinner sushi set which came with a bowl of miso soup and a mysterious dish of something which I later discovered was chawanmushi.  The chawanmushi became my new favourite food and all my anxieties evaporated.  I knew I was going to enjoy this culinary adventure.

Then breakfast.  We didn't want to eat meals at inflated prices in a hotel restaurant so we set out to find out what Japanese eat for breakfast.  Well they don't eat out.  There was nothing open that appeared to serve any kind of food or beverage.  But there was a 711 (convenience store) with a huge array of packaged sandwiches.  Delicious egg club sandwiches and salad became our go-to option for on the move dining.

We had lunch with Harriet's school friend Hiromi, who some of you will remember, and her mother, Ikuko. They took us to an amazing sushi bar, Umegaoka Sushi no Midori in Shibuya.  If you are planning to eat sushi in Japan, go here.  You have to be prepared to wait for a long time but you can put your name down and they will text you when a table is coming up.  They had an ipad at the table and you just send your order straight to the kitchen.

We ate so much sushi along with fresh pickles, miso soup and that delicious chawanmushi, I didn't think I would be able to move from the table. I felt I could eat like this forever. However after that sushi extravaganza I did not want to eat again that day.

In the Tokyu department store foodhall in Shibuya we found dorayaki which featured in one of our favourite Japanese movies, An. These were delicious. 

We made a day excursion from Tokyo to Kamakura, again inspired by a favourite movie, Umimachi Diary. 

There were some pretty interesting sweet food options available at street stalls. I wasn't sure what to make of a combination waffle-ice cream-chesecake?

The most popular flavour for sweet treats seems to be matcha followed closely in popularity by purple sweet potato, which more closely resembles kumara than any sweet potato I have ever seen outside NZ.  But sweet potato and matcha ice cream?  Just no!
We took an electric train to Enoshima, a seaside village where there were amazing seafood stalls and even more disturbing culinary offerings.  I can assure you that none of these alarming concoctions were consumed by me.

We travelled from Tokyo to Hakone via Mt Fuji.  Hakone was my first taste of village Japan and I was captivated from the moment we set off from the station to our hotel, Pax Yoshino.  From the outside Pax Yoshino looked like a regular hotel but on the inside it was most definitely Japanese. Tatami mats, cedar bathtub, low beds. We were provided with yakuta and Japanese socks, indoor slippers and outdoor sandals. We also had very stylish jackets to wear over the yakuta in case we ventured out in the cool night air.

We ate our first washoku meal.  Some of the food items were unfamiliar and sometimes surprising.
There was something called "favored cooked spirally coiled shell"  which may or may not have been a snail but turned out to be delicious.
I was bewildered by the item in the soup which appeared to be crisp stalks coated in a gelatinous
substance.  Research revealed this to be the braseniaschreberi, a type of water shield plant whose "young curled leaf tips, which are coated with a thick transparent mucilage, are eaten as a salad with vinegar, sake and soy sauce, or they added to soups as a thickener"  Also delicious.

We had to take an early train to get to Magome to start our walk.  I say train, but this journey involved a train from Hakone to Odewara, then a bullet train to Nagoya, another train to Nakatsugawa and finally a bus to Magome.  We had to leave before breakfast was served and our hostess offered to make us a bento breakfast to eat enroute. This was waiting for us when we checked out at reception.  Rice and pickles she said, so imagine our surprise and delight at Odewara station when we tucked into rice balls stuffed with sour plums, salmon, fried potato, sausage, tonkatsu pork and a piece of rolled omelette.