Good Robot, Bad Robot, Good Food, Good Drinks

 April 26, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

Breakfast in Hiroshima was a standard Japanese hotel breakfast, except for the robot. The robot wandered around the dining room, collecting trays and dirty dishes from those who had finished eating, and carrying them back to the kitchen.

The rain looked like it would clear up soon. Fortunately, our hotel was connected to the train station, so we didn't have to worry about getting wet as we made our way to our train. We bought snacks on the way to our platform to sustain us on our longest travel day so far. We would be riding two shinkansen (bullet trains) and a subway to get to the Shinjuku section of Tokyo. All of the transfers were easy. We took the Marunouchi subway line to the Nishi-Shinjuku Station, one long block from our hotel.

Hooray for the Hilton Tokyo. It's a little bit Japanese and a little bit not. Sometimes you are ready for "a little bit not" after 10 days of total immersion. We were delighted to be upgraded to  one of the Executive Floors (35th floor). The luggage that we sent ahead was already waiting for us in one of our rooms. 

Thank you, Hilton. 💙💙💙💙💙💙

We have stayed at this hotel a number of times, so we know our way around, more or less. Libby and Eric quickly learned their way around.  

The afternoon view from our room

It's about a 10 minute walk from the hotel to bustling Shinjuku Station, the world's busiest transportation hub. In 2018 an average of 3.59 million passengers per day arrived at or departed from one of the 53 platforms at this station. It's a monster, but it's really quite doable if you can avoid rush hour.

We are going to meet our tour group for "The Best of Izakaya" with Ninja Food Tours near Shinjuku Station. On the way there, I point out a couple of landmarks so that Shinjuku newcomers Libby and Eric can get their bearings. It can be really busy here and it is full of skyscrapers. Most of the skyscrapers look alike. The one landmark you can always see and easily identify is the "Cocoon Tower."

The Cocoon Tower - photo from Wikipedia

Libby and Eric quickly added a nearby 7-Eleven to their catalog of local landmarks, guaranteeing that they will never get lost in this neighborhood.

An izakaya is a Japanese bar or pub that serves alcohol and snacks. Izakaya are often quite small. There were 11 of us in the tour, plus our guide, Sato. We walked past some of the tiniest izakaya, but Sato took us to places that could handle our group. It was a little bit early - things don't usually get busy until about 7:30 pm, when most office workers (called "salary men" here) leave work for the day.

A typical izakaya, in its entirety

If you have ever seen Midnight Diner, you might think we are going to go to the little izakaya where most of the episodes take place. We walked through "Omoide Yokocho" ("Memory Lane"), but Master was nowhere to be seen.

Omoide Yokocho

Sato then led us underneath the train tracks and through a pedestrian tunnel (also recognizable from Midnight Diner) to Kabuki-cho. It's a boisterous part of Shinjuku that Ken and I had never been to before. 

You know you're in Kabuki-cho when you see this gateway.

We arrived at our first stop, where we were served beer and cheese and olives. Oh wait, NOT cheese and olives.  Bamboo shoots and a rubber ball.

Instead of peanuts or pretzels, the drinks here come with bamboo shoot and konnyaku, a type of rubbery yam cake

The main feature of this place was yakitori - grilled, skewered chicken and various chicken organs, such as hearts and liver. It was all good, though I did not try the hearts.

Pretending that they CAN'T WAIT to try the chicken hearts

 

There is no kitchen in the back because there is no "back" here. This is it, right behind the bar, and it looks chaotic.

At our next stop, we sampled sake and seafood. Eel seems to be a very popular dish in Japan and we had some sort of cooked eel. It's not my favorite. It tends to have a lot of fine bones, which are hard for me to think about.

The seafood place

 

 

 

Sake and some incredibly delicious sashimi - a fatty tuna and a regular tuna

Crab and potato croquettes. Also incredibly delicious

A less memorable sashimi. Very fresh, fairly bland.

Fried octopus. ("Fried" was the best adjective I could come up with.)

Sea grapes

Unforgettable salmon sashimi

 

The Clean Plate Club has left the building

On our way to the next izakaya, we "happened" to pass the most famous resident of Shinjuku.

I suddenly found myself in a strange, alien world, and realized I was in the middle of a dream. As with most dreams, I really can't remember many of the details, except for the following dream sequence, in which I appeared on Jeopardy.  Or did I?

Me: Alex, I'll take "Japanese Pop Culture" for $1,000.

Trebek: He has appeared in 33 Japanese films, 5 American films, comic books, and video games, and he presently serves as an official tourism ambassador in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

Me: Who is Godzilla?

Then Alex and I were suddenly eating something weird and rubbery, and then we went outside, and it was night, and there were people all around us. The next thing I knew, there was Godzilla, on top of a hotel. 

Godzilla looked right at me with his beady eye, and I had a bad feeling. He roared, and blue radioactive flames shot out of his mouth.

And then . . . as suddenly as it started, it was over. 

 

The cheesy music stopped. The lame roaring stopped. The malevolent red eyes dimmed. It couldn't have lasted more than 15 seconds . . .

    🦖 🦖 🦖 🦖 🦖 🦖 🦖 🦖  🦖 🦖 🦖 🦖 🦖  🦖 🦖 🦖 🦖 🦖 🦖  

. . . and then I must have woken up. The next thing I remember is eating tonkatsu outside a tiny tonkatsu shop. Tonkatsu are pork cutlets, coated in panko and deep-fried. Other meats can also be used for katsu.

Many Japanese restaurants display amazingly realistic models of food in a front window. They are full sized, and very detailed. These models are usually made of plastic, resin, or wax. Here is a close up of fake tonkatsu:

 

Let's continue to our final stop, where we treated to some sort of ground meat and flatbread, salad, gyoza, mixed drinks, and lemon sorbet. I tried a drink called a "lemon sour." It was quite nice, and I would have it again on a subsequent night. Ken tried the plum wine. Also quite nice.

All in all, despite my nightmare about Godzilla, it was a very fun evening.

 

Today's color is salmon.