Sushi for Cents, Beef for Bills

Monday, February 17

We found ourselves moving slowly this morning. Maybe as a result of the rounds of haiboru (whiskey highballs) the night before, or maybe because we were hesitant to leave Shimbashi. We had grown quite fond of our little corner of Tokyo.

One of my favorite parts of travel is slowly filling in the blank expanses of my mental map of a place: linking points of interest with routes I have walked, suddenly finding that I have a favorite way to traverse a neighborhood that seemed so foreign only a few days before, coming across what appears to be an unfamiliar intersection only to realize that I have been there already but approached it from a different direction. My understanding of a place molds and remolds itself like soft clay, morphing with each new discovery. There is something wonderful about the transformation of a place from somewhere that I see to somewhere that I begin to know. It makes leaving places behind difficult, but exciting to start the process anew.

So, we retraced our path back to our nearby train station, bags in hand. Like Thomas and me, Shimbashi was still waking up, with storefronts firmly closed and streets mostly empty of people. The fellow patrons of the izakaya from last night likely at work, nursing hangovers, or both.

We took the train to Tokyo Station, the central transportation hub of the city, where we would be catching the train out of Tokyo that evening. We stored our bags in the station so that we could explore this area untethered, a decision we celebrated each time we narrowly missed annihilation by a wheeled suitcase of another tourist on the sidewalk.

Tokyo Station is a beautiful building. Built in 1914, it survived both the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and World War II. Since then, the station has expanded up, down, and in every cardinal direction, creating a labyrinth of transportation options, yes, but also restaurants, bars, cafes, shopping areas, spas, and salons that I'm fairly certain we could not explore fully even if we spent our six-week trip just in this station. It would be very easy for someone to get lost here. (Is that foreshadowing too heavy-handed?)

The red brick exterior stands out in the sea of glass-clad skyrises. We wandered the streets, picking our way between businessmen and tour groups, until the office parks gave way to an elevated expanse of lush greenery walled with stone. Bridges leading across the sizeable moat beckoned us away from modern Tokyo back into the imperial era.

The Imperial Palace has been the main residence of Japan's Imperial Family since 1608 (with the exception of 1868-1888, following the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate). It is still the residence of the current Imperial Family, and as such, only a portion of the grounds are accessible to us common-folk. We walked the length of the gravel paths, admiring the imposing castle architecture and peeking nervously at the guards poised to wrangle us should we get too close to the second layer of moats and stone walls safely enclosing the nobility.

Lunch time. We settled on a popular conveyor belt sushi chain called Kura Sushi. If one is so inclined, dining here can be done without interacting with anyone. We entered our party number on a touch screen, which spit back an available booth number to which we could direct ourselves. Each booth has its own noren (privacy curtains) to hide away gluttony and/or lackluster chopsticks skills from unsuspecting patrons. Passing through each booth, snaking its way through the restaurant, is a double decker conveyer belt. On the bottom layer, plates of nigiri weave lazily past tables, safely tucked away in their acrylic bubbles from the grubby hands of other diners. This made for quite the enticing parade.

Choosier diners can instead order from the tablets stationed at the ready on each table, which present page after page of sushi, appetizers, drinks, sides, and desserts. Many of the usual suspects from U.S. sushi joints—tuna, salmon, mackerel, snapper, urchin, squid—are present here, ready to be compared to your favorite sushi bar back home.

Others are less familiar to our American palettes, with rice topped sticky piles of natto (fermented soybeans), mixed vegetables tossed in salad dressing, marinated pieces of pork, and highly-suspect squeezes of cod milt (sperm sacks bursting with... on second thought, the name is probably self-explanatory).

Still other options would make you roll your eyes and deem them "inauthentic" if you saw them on the menu in America: pieces of salmon smothered in thick layers of mayonnaise, slices of cheese deep fried in tempura batter, french fries rolled in sushi rice and sheets of nori.

After placing an order on the tablet and a subsequent, shockingly-short wait, the upper level of the conveyer belt whirs into action. Pieces of sushi are sent whizzing by a pace that surely must rival the current land speed record before coming to an expectant halt before its intended recipient.

Thomas and I gleefully ordered plates of nigiri, pots of miso soup, bowls of edamame, and only the most traditional Japanese sweets of tiramisu and chocolate cake. We were instructed (via tablet, of course) to deposit empty plates into a slot in our table to make space on the compact surface area and keep track of the items we had ordered.

Bemusingly, for every five plates deposited, the table’s tablet lit up with an animated game that, if completed successfully, would win you a randomly selected piece of branded merch from a gacha machine perched high above the conveyer belts.

Conveyor belt sushi is aptly named—the appeal comes just as much from the novelty of the delivery system as the sushi itself. It’s probably the equivalent of looking for an authentic New York slice at a Chuck-E-Cheese.

Still, to our undiscerning palettes trained on the all-you-can-eat variety of sushi joint in the U.S., the sushi here was a revelation. The only way I can think to describe the difference in taste is that it seemed cleaner—each bite a concentrated jolt of only the most appealing umami, free from the impurities of slight fishiness or time in the freezer. Even more impressive was the difference in texture. Describing it as “melt in the mouth” might be overselling it, but it’s not an exaggeration to say that the use of teeth was wholly unnecessary. Sampled blindly, one could be forgiven for mistaking the tuna for a slab of butter.

Conveyer belt sushi places like this do not fit the romanticized vision many foreigners have about Authetic Japanese Sushi™️: a serious and intimate affair, with a minimalist interior and a wooden sushi bar wrapping like an altar around a master at work. But they are certainly authentic to a different side of Japan—one that moves quickly and values convenience, one that celebrates cutely-packaged consumerism, one that does not take itself too seriously.

Thomas and I left Kura simultaneously looking forward to trying more reputable sushi, and acknowledging that we will definitely be returning for more conveyer belt sushi before we leave.

Only a few days into our trip, we were already so laden with paper goods—stamps, calligraphy, tickets, receipts, brochures—that we felt compelled to hoard for their aesthetic and sentimental value. This made a stop at Itoya, the nearby 12-story stationery store, a natural pit stop on our way back to Tokyo Station.

On a different day, without tired feet and a Thomas looking forward to the next portion of our journey, I could have spent hours here. An entire floor dedicated to pigments, paints, and inks in every shade, lining the walls like tinctures in an apothecary. A floor dedicated just to pens, the cost of many of which exceeded the entire budget for our six-week trip. Who buys these pens? What important work must they fill their days with as to require such an extravagant writing utensil?

It's hard not to envision in these stores a version of myself if I was given the gift of more time, someone that would spend Sunday afternoons, nose buried in a notebook, reflecting and sketching and writing. The fantasy of this vision is intoxicating, and Thomas and I both found ourselves placing notebooks, pens, stamps, washi tape, and stickers into our basket, in hopes of realizing those more introspective and creative alter egos.

One step closer to revealing the intersection of our idealized selves our with our real ones, we returned to Tokyo Station for the next leg of our journey. I remind you, reader, of the not-so-subtle foreshadowing from earlier in this entry. You see, we had made the rookie mistake of approaching the station from a different angle, choosing a new entrance, the hubris of our previously successful navigation attempts clouding our judgement.

Corridor leading to escalator leading to hallway leading to dead end. We passed stall after stall of restaurants, cafes, bars—truly an underground city as rich and as bustling as the one on the surface. And, most surprising of all, the businesses occupying these subterranean passageways seemed... good? Every bit as busy and part of the local lexicon as their surface-dwelling counterparts.

Like most things, exploring the cavernous underground was fun until it wasn't. Until the thoughts of missing trains and being late for check in and being charged no-show fees at dinner began to set in. The pace of our expedition hastened from saunter to scurry, increasingly frenetic as the departure time of our train loomed closer. But as dawn follows the darkest night, the correct train terminal follows the most panicked search.

Our last stop in Tokyo proper was Oniku Karyu, the first of a few fine dining reservations we had made before arriving. Oniku Karyu is a Michelin starred kaiseki restaurant (traditional Japanese cuisine that tends to be multiple, small courses that present a range of seasonal ingredients showcased with a range of techniques), helmed by chef Haruka Katayanagi. In a departure from typical kaiseki, Katayanagi's meal is all about beef: namely, the coveted Wagyu and Kobe varieties.

A stark comparison to the incongruous Kura Sushi, Oniku Karyu fit, in every way, the vision of Japanese dining we had in our heads. In fact, I can imagine Katayanagi's chagrin at being placed in the same sentence as Kura in the first place.

Upon entering, we were ushered to a private room floored with tatami and shielded from the main dining space with sliding paper doors. Sitting down and pulling in the chair after me prompted a round of hurried sumimasen's ("sorry" and/or "excuse me") from our hostess, I assume for her not offering to pull my chair out quickly enough, sending waves of guilt over us. How rude of us to have sat ourselves—while incredibly kind and thoughtful, this level of service surpasses the threshold that starts to make me feel rather uncomfortable with its attentiveness. However, a few moments and a couple pours from a bottle of sake dulled any sense of guilt, and all was soon forgotten as waves of courses emanated from the kitchen.

A deeply smokey miso soup with local tofu—creamier than I thought tofu could be—with Kobe beef tongue, tender and savory. A piece of Wagyu sushi, served raw and at body temperature, delicately draped over a pad of vinegared rice. A supremely moreish beef cutlet sandwich, glazed with tangy sauce between pieces of toasted Japanese milk bread. Beef stew with intense flavor—the taste that I keep my own beef stew simmering for hours in hopes of achieving even a portion of its richness.

It was at this point, I suppose at what was the somewhat-meaningless transition between "starter" and "entree," that the chef presented us with the certification of the beef. Paragraphs of characters espoused the specific pedigree, along with the identification of the specific cow we had the privilege of consuming, given to us via the very cute bovine equivalent of a fingerprint: a nose imprint. A rather gloomy intermission. They might as well have paraded her orphaned calf around the restaurant and encouraged us to name her before the inevitable slaughtering.

Anyway, a sense of righteousness can only last so long when presented with such tempting morsels. Raw slivers of beef, nicknamed tajimeguro for its delicate texture riving meguro (tuna), served alongside silky bamboo shoots and roasted peppers. Slices of paper-thin shabu-shabu, eaten quickly before it cooked further in the broth in which it is served, dipped in golden egg yolks, truly deserve the title of "melt in your mouth." A Japanese set meal, served in miniature, offered a spread of unctuous Oxtail, fragrant rice, and crisp pickles.

Based on the menu provided, it was at this point that the service should have transitioned to dessert; however, our hostess returned with a proclamation that a "secret" menu item would be served: spicy beef curry with rice. The hostess kindly returned and (pointedly directed at Thomas) explained that they had made extra curry and asked if we would like any. Thomas agreed on a second helping, while I happily helped scrape away the final drops on our plates. A final course of sugar ice cream, strawberry jelly, and cross sections of fresh strawberries finished out the meal.

Our hostess, ever elegant and charming, made us to feel like we were the experts, like our judgement was to be trusted, like we knew best. An impressive feat given our utter buffoonery. She, unfailingly, announced her presence in hushed murmurs each time she knocked at the door of our private room, politely waiting a few moments before silently sliding our paper door open and shuffling in to serve the next course or pour of sake. She was generous with giggles, making us feel like each comment we made was the most humorous, interesting statement that she had ever heard. I started to understand the appeal of the maids that seemed so intent on luring Thomas back to their siren dens yesterday,

Throughout the evening, Thomas and I marveled at how our hostess seemed to have an uncanny sense for when we finished our courses or might need a refill from our bottles of sake and sparking water, seemingly anticipating our needs before they even became known to ourselves. This sense of mysticism faded about two-thirds of the way through our meal, when we noticed a small camera in the corner of the room, prompting us to revisit all of the dorky exclamations, greedy swipes of fingers across plates to sop up any remaining sauce, and little dances of culinary pleasure we had done thus far. A show for the unlucky staff-member tasked with monitoring our feed, I suppose.

At the conclusion of the meal, the chef quietly entered our room to inquire what had brought us to Japan, where else we would be visiting, and where we were from. We made polite conversation with him, exchanging his competent English with our garbled Japanese, as he diligently signed the menus we had been given and wished us well on the rest of our journey. After settling the bill and wishing a grateful adieu to our hostess, we returned to the elevators only to be led out by the chef himself, folding himself into a deep bow until the elevator doors slowly closed.

From sushi delivered in footlong bullet trains in a mall to a contemplative succession of Wagyu from a master chef, this day was truly about experiencing the gamut of culinary delights in Tokyo. Stuffed with great food, tipsy on sake, and high on the spirit of adventure, we made the long, brisk, and windy trek back outside of the city to our next stop: Tokyo Disney.