I took many photos during my final week in the Noto, and while I would love to talk about them, it became quite clear to me that it was not possible time-wise to blog about them individually. So here is a selection of the shots taken at school, at various sobetsukai and around my little town of Ukawa - including the ones taken at the obscene time of before 6am on Friday morning (the lovely morning mist gave a nice touch). These are the faces of those who have made my year-long stay in inaka (rural) Noto memorable, and these are the familiar scenes of where I lived for that duration.






Despite having unintentionally woken up at 4:50am on Friday, somehow the time managed to slip past me and I ended having to speed my butt and my luggages to the Noto airport in less than 20 minutes, which is indeed a record time. Friday was a crazy day, and I am hoping I did not forget anything in the rush.

Alas, it's still no time for me to rest and relax just yet, because in just a couple of days time, we will be on the plane once again, this time off to New York. We will be staying on Wall St in the midst of Manhattan for two months while Rob receives his job training. Am I excited about NYC? Kinda. I'm looking forward to flying in the Business Class though ;)

My routine on most Saturday afternoons in the Noto involve meeting a group of lovely ladies to have a casual English conversation class. Not too long ago, they held a farewell dinner for Rob when he left the Noto in May for Tokyo. Last Sunday, they organised my sobetsukai at Ryusen in Suzu, a 45minutes drive north from my apartment.

Like many small restaurants in the Noto, this establishment is run by a couple - the food is prepared by the master-san and served by the mama-san. It seems that the ladies frequent Ryusen quite a bit since they were on quite familiar terms with the mama-san. It's a nice place, decorations are simple but beautiful. The food was described to me using the word sosaku, which translates to English as original work. I'd described it as modern Japanese cuisine with an artistic flair. As you can see in the photos, each course was gorgeously presented. The quality was excellent, and I'd highly recommend this place if you're ever in the Noto. Unfortunately I don't know how much the food costs (as they did not want me to pay), but I'd guess that you should expect to pay around 5000yen per person.

Tonight's course showcases the summer produce, and light and refreshing was the main theme.

Beautifully fresh sashimi; and sazae (sea snail) with yaki nasu (grilled eggplant):


Su no mono (vinegared dish - fish and vegetables); and ice cold somen noodles with onsen tamago (hot spring egg - basically soft boiled egg):


Fried fish and vegetables; and simple ochazuke (rice with broth):


Dessert was corn ice cream - the corn flavour was subtle but so delightfully refreshing!



I really enjoyed the dinner, and I will miss having regular chats with these ladies on Saturday afternoons.

Tsukareta (tired)! Cleaning, some packing (still have more to do), writing farewell/thank-you notes and baking lots of treats for my collegues. And I had my final sobetsukai (farewell dinner party) last night with my collegues from school (and I saw one of my favourite teachers, Kitano-sensei, who was transferred to another school in far away Wajima! :>). I will post lots of photos and blog about them when I have Rob's laptop at my disposal when he is at work next week - his laptop is so much faster.. this old laptop will be given to Kim and Richie who really needs one.

The house inspectors arrived 2 hours early on Wednesday because they were scheduled to inspect Alex's apartment next door at 2pm. I was glad I got all the cleaning done by lunchtime. Plus, I was relieved that I'd asked Kami-sensei to come a few hours early to help me mend one of the shoji screen (it was still being mended when the inspectors came, but at least Kami-sensei was around). And them turning up unexpectedly meant that I didn't have time to build the nerves and paranoia up in my head about whether or not I'd get a full refund of my deposit (a hefty sum of 135,000yen). This is my first Japanese house inspection, and I must admit it was kinda strange - they took photos of everything (the closet space weren't very tidy :P). Other than that, it went well.

Here's a photo of the shoji on the floor, awaiting for the glue to dry.


I have a lil time on my hands, since I woke up at 04:50 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep.. I still have quite a bit of packing to do and have to do a few things with this laptop before giving it away (backing it up, deleting and setting up new accounts etc etc) before my flight later this afternoon, but I thought that since I'm moving to begin yet another chapter in my life, I'd reflect on what I've learnt since arriving in Japan in August last year (I won't go into what I've done since I've chronicled it in this livejournal).

This last year, I've observed the Japanese habit and way of segregating everything into seasons and categories. For example, winter food like noodle soups and nabemono (hotpots) are only for winter, and summer sweets like warabi mochi are only for summer. Which is understandable, but what if you're craving for some nabe in summer or some cool sweets in winter? It's considered strange if you do anything outside of its season. Another season-related observation: people really (and I mean really) look forward to sakura (cherry blossom) seaason - April is when the year begins; towns and cities plan their events and festivals based on the meteorology's cherry blossom forecast; hordes of people all over Japan (and the world) flock to the prettiest gardens during this period; and food and sweets revolve around the cherry blossoms - eg only during this period can you get sakura mochi and yummy sakura-flavoured baked goods. Another thing that is segregated is food by age. Children's food are for children, so if you're an adult and eating an ice cream without any accompanying children, you will be thought of as okashi (strange).

That said, this Japanese habit of separating things is not really a bad thing - it shows that the Japanese are very disciplined. For example, they are really hard workers, but outside of work/school they sure know how to have fun! The matsuri is a great prime example of that. And I've had my fair share of enkais to see normally reserved collegues let loose after a bit of eating and drinking.

I thought I'd also give a list of 5 will miss/won't miss things about the Noto (it's not in any particular order, just as it comes to my head):

Will miss: The awesome matsuri (festival) experience, and superbly fresh seafood.
Won't miss: ... (the food is pretty awesome here) ...

Will miss: Being treated special because of gaijin status.
Won't miss: Being stared at because of gaijin status.
(these not so much when I'm by myself because my appearances blend in, but mostly when I'm with Rob)

Will miss: My girl students going "Kawaii" (cute/pretty) to things I wear, say or do.
Won't miss: The Kawaii culture here in Japan can sometimes be a little OTT.

Will miss: Boy students' wide-eyed wonder and "Uso!" (lie) when I answer that I ride to school on my bike from Ukawa.
Won't miss: It takes freakin' long just to get anywhere.

Will miss: New students wondering "Who is this person that can speak English so fluently?
Won't miss: People mistaking me for a Japanese teacher in the staffroom and starts talking to me in Japanese.

Will miss: Being surrounded by beautiful nature, and I love the summer sounds here - birds tweeting, cicadas chirping and various other 'summer' sounds.
Won't miss: The abundance of bugs. Now, I like bugs, just not in my house! How the heck do they get in anyway? I hate killing bugs unnecessarily (also because dead things grosses me out more than live ones) but nowadays I don't have any qualms about sqooshing them if I find any inside the house.

Will miss: Simple things like taking out my camera to take photos of food, and collegues admires my camera and asks about it (happened last night).
Won't miss: How difficult it is to get some stuff out here in the countryside.


Anyway, I really need to get back to it. Hopefully this will be a good enough read for my readers (if there are any...) until my next post!

Been absolutely busy with cleaning and packing. The inspectors are coming around tomorrow afternoon, so I'm hoping everything will be done by then.. I still have yet to change the shoji paper for one of the windows. And there are lots of little things that need to be put away.. I get so scattered-brained when I have so much to do so I have made a list of things-to-do, and set deadlines for each of them!

Been having a few sobetsukai (farewell parties) and dinners these past two weeks (one more for Thursday with my collegues), yet it hasn't quite hit me yet that I'm leaving the Noto.. I suppose being frantically busy has prevented me from thinking too much about it.. It's slowly coming on though, as I realised in my car on my way home tonight from dinner at Kim's place that I'm gonna miss her. And that I'm gonna miss this beautiful countryside and all the wonderful people who have made my stay here unforgettable.. I hate goodbyes since it makes it seem like I'm never gonna see anyone here again, so I'm telling everyone that we plan to visit Noto now and then..

Anyway, hopefully I'll have more time to blog later on this week. Have loads of photos to blog about! :)

Cleaning is so much fun and I should do it more often! Not. Well, actually maybe I should do it more often so that it's not such a huge job like it is now. Just taking a lil break atm..

This last weekend was a long weekend in Japan, with Umi no Hi (Marine Day) holiday on Monday. I spent the time with Rob in Tokyo, but the typhoon headed for Japan for the weekend certainly made it a soggy long weekend. Of all days, why a weekend? Of all weekends, why the long weekend? Anyway, one of Rob's American collegues took us out to dinner in Roppongi, which is gaijin-central of Tokyo. Honestly, I'm not used to encountering so many different gaijins (foreigners) in one place! Even the trains to and from Roppongi were rife with gaijins!

The place we headed to was an izakaya called Teyandei. Rob's collegue had not been to this place before, and was bringing us there by another's recommendation. It was quite tricky looking for this place, and the rain did not help. Ringing the place didn't help much either as neither of us three had a good enough grasp of Japanese. So there we were, standing on one of the main roads of Nishi Azabu, looking like really lost gaijins when lo and behold, one of the staff from the said izakaya (in his apron and uniform) asked if we were looking for this particular place (I guess it helps that we were looking lost). So this guy leads us back to his izakaya, but it was actually quite a trek from the main road. We kinda felt bad that he had to walk in the rain to look for us, so far away from his workplace. But that's Japanese hospitality for you :)

It was past 7:30pm when we came in, but the place was quite empty. It did fill up by 9pm which shows that it is quite a popular place despite its relatively obscure location. Teyandei specialty dishes are from Okinawa, the subtropical islands located to the far south of Japan. The staff are very friendly and helpful, which more than compensated for the lack of English menu. We stumbled along just fine with our fledgling Japanese and their limited English, and ordered unusual Japanese dishes such as Goya Champuru, a 'war bird' dish, horse sashimi and Ashi Tebichi (pig's feet). We ordered many dishes, most of them based on me asking "Osusume wa?" ("What do you recommend?") since I've never encountered most of the dishes before and had absolutely no idea what would be good. They were all pretty good, and it is quite obvious that modern Okinawan cuisine has quite a bit of American influences. I was told that Okinawans are the longest-living people in Japan, and that is attributed to their diet which frequently features pork.

Here are some shots of the more unusual dishes we had (forgot to take a photo of the pig's feet):

Tamago (egg) roll stuffed with unagi (eel) - good combination; Croquette with nama tamago (raw eggs) as a dipping sauce - also pretty good, using raw eggs to add a Japanese touch:


Goya champuru (stirfried bittergourd with horsemeat) - I like bittergourd so I enjoyed this simple dish; Pork tsukune (meatball) - the tsukune tasted very Chinese and it reminded me very much of Chinese pork dumplings without the wrapper:


Avocadome (dome of avocado with tuna and mayo stuffing) - another simple but rich dish, the combination of avocado and tuna went well together; Shamo aka 'war bird' - it tastes similar to chicken, but a bit tougher in texture, perhaps closer to pork. Rob and I agreed that it had a very familiar taste, like something we've eaten before, but we couldn't pinpoint exactly what:


Uma (horse) sashimi - included pieces from the neck fat (the white pieces), fatty ribs and shank. The meat in general was quite mild tasting, and the texture was chewy. I didn't try the neck fat, but the others say it doesn't taste very fatty at all, and that it was best eaten with the raw sliced garlic. Horse meat is quite palatable, and should perhaps be used more often worldwide:



Interesting experience. Since Okinawa is one of the two places left on my list of must-see place in Japan (Hokkaido is the other one), this gives me a taste of the type of food that I can expect to try when I visit :)

I just delivered my farewell speech to the school at the closing ceremony. It was completely in Japanese, and there were a couple of parts that evoked chuckles from the students. I was sure it was due to grammatical error since it wasn't humourous (not intentionally anyway), so I later asked Kami sensei and she told me I had a couple of small grammatical errors, and said it was her fault for not detecting them when she checked it. Oh well, it gave for a lighter mood and Kami sensei said it meant that the students were listening to me :) Plus I'm sure the students know they make more mistakes in English than I did in my Japanese ;P

For my farewell gift, I received a bunch of gorgeous flowers and a beautiful lacquerware case covered with kinpaku (gold foil) - a very furusato (regional) gift since lacquerware is Wajima's specialty, and Kanazawa produces 99% of Japan's kinpaku. A group of my 3rd year girls also gave me a friendship band. Strangely today wasn't emotional or sad for me. I guess it could perhaps be because I don't really feel like it's goodbye since I'm staying on in Japan. Besides, we do intend to come back again to the Noto to visit.



These next few days I will be very busy with farewell dinners, packing and cleaning. The dinners will be fun, but not looking forward to the packing and cleaning...

The same weekend of the Abare Matsuri, I drove my visiting friends around the Noto - to the Wajima asaichi (morning market), Senmaida and all the other places worth visiting in the Noto. It was a long drive, but the summer scene is gorgeous - both of the sea and of the mountains.

There is a blueberry farm in Yanagida opposite the Botanical Park and adjacent to the blueberry winery, and blueberry season has begun. Blueberry picking has just opened to the public, and will continue onto mid August, so we took this opportunity to stuff our face full of blueberries. We pay a 1000yen (~AU$10) entry fee per person, and it's a tabehoudai affair: all-you-can-eat while you pick. We were each given a small tub to fill which we can take with us when we leave. If we wanted more than the little tub, it was a 2100yen/kg price tag. I think I'd eaten and picked more than my entry fee's worth.

Rob, Holly and Rie busy:


A strange, stripey insect atop one of the blueberry bush, and my harvest (the kiasu in me filled my tub past its brim):

The second night on Saturday is the "violent" part of festival. We arrived in town around 8pm, and it seemed to us that the streets were less noisy than the evening before. Perhaps the residents were preparing the long exhausting night ahead. Rob made an interesting observation: it seems like the streets (at least in the Noto) were built to accommodate matsuri events - the heights of powerlines are just tall enough for the kiriko and the traffic lights are mounted on poles that can be swung out of the way.

After the usual kiriko-carrying up and down the streets, around 10pm, a mikoshi (portable shrine) was brought out from one of the town's shrines. The mikoshi was thrown into the river, and men (in quite a drunken state) jumped in and proceeded to bash the mikoshi into the concrete river banks. One of the ladies from our Saturday English convo class invited us to her sister's place which gave us an excellent view of the scene above the crowds. The lighting was quite bad, so these photos are not the best quality.

Throwing the mikoshi into the river and men jumping in after to thrash it around:




After 10-15 minutes of thrashing the mikoshi in the river, the mikoshi was lifted out and set on the bank of the river. The men had swollen red shoulders, but they don't seem to mind. Perhaps the sake was effective at numbing the pain.


Around 11pm, my friends were tired and wanted to go home. Rob stayed on until 2pm to witness the remaining events. Another mikoshi from another shrine was given pretty much the same treatment as the first mikoshi at a smaller river. From what I understand, both mikoshi were then set on fire! Amazing sights that I missed, but thankfully I left my camera with Rob.



This was an amazing event and I'm glad that it was held in my town and we got to experience it!

[edited to add: Rob's server is having issues, so the photos may not work on this livejournal from time to time. Hopefully the problems will be solved soon.]

This last weekend, Rob flew back to the Noto from Tokyo for the much-anticipated Abare Matsuri, dubbed as the "Fire & Violence Festival" - he has waited for one year for this event! My friend Rie from Perth and fellow Perth JET Holly (situated in Kobe) also came for the festival, so it's also a busy weekend of driving around the Noto Peninsula, showing them where I live. Rie came after spending the previous week in Tokyo, and Holly lives near Kobe city, so they really appreciated the peaceful and tranquil inaka-ness of where I live. They also got to experience the exciting and crazy matsuri (festival) not experienced in the more populated city areas of Japan. (I don't even want to begin to think about crowd control for a similar type of matsuri in a huge city like Tokyo!)

A bit of info on this festival: The Abare Matsuri is held over two days in the town of Ushitsu, which is where my school is located (~10mins north along the coast from my apartment in Ukawa). It is perhaps the most famous festival in all of Ishikawa prefecture, and for good reason too - it's even better and more crazy than the Wajima Taisai! Reputed as the most 'fierce' festival in Japan, Abare Matsuri marks the start of over 100 Kiriko Matsuri held during the summer in Ishikawa (a kiriko is a mikoshi (portable shrine) lantern as tall as 7 metres). There's a Kiriko Hall in Wajima that displays many of the prefecture's kirikos. The Abare Matsuri features about 50 kirikos, each representing the individual chonaikai (neighbourhoods) of Ushitsu. People from all over Japan visit the Noto for this festival, so it wasn't just a crazy hectic weekend for the residents of Ushitsu, it was also a busy (and lucrative) weekend for the Noto tourism industry.

This matsuri is a chance that comes only once a year where the residents of Ushitsu can get drunk, play arson and be violent all in the name of culture and tradition. It's truly quite a sight to behold men, women and youths in jinbe (a type of yukata) carrying over 50 huge kiriko up and down the street and around huge bonfires and tall poles of fire to the cheering "yasai" chants, trilling notes of the flutes and beats of the taiko drums. It is even more spectacular to witness drunken men throw a mikoshi (portable shrine) into the river, jump in after it and proceed to bash, whack and do all sorts of violent and destructive acts to it. It is rescued from the river, but later meets its fiery end when it is lit on fire. There is also one other mikoshi that meets this same fate. I doubt that many of the youths even know the meaning behind this festival - to them (and us), it's party time!

On the first (Friday) evening, shortly after arriving in town, we bumped into the instructors from our judo class. Despite it being only around 7:45pm in the evening, these guys had already primed themselves well with alcohol. The main street of the town was lined with many yatai (stalls) selling the typical festival junk food and various knickknacks. The judo guys were on their way to one of the judo sensei's house for some "sake and biiru" and invited us along. We arrived, and the hosts were delighted at having gaijins visiting their home. We found the tables full of yummy matsuri food surrounded by merry (drunk?) people. I kinda wished we hadn't eaten dinner already, because it must've seemed rude how little we ate. The men around the table kept trying to get Rob to drink alcohol despite him declining offers several times. And Rob with his apparent gaijin (foreign) appearance was very popular at the table.

Rob and the guys from judo (this one's for you, Amy & Chrissie ;)); and the spread on one half of the table:


We excused ourselves around 8:45pm and left to watch the action. We'd missed the fireworks at 8pm, and there was already a huge bonfire going by the sea near the townhall. Four or five poles about 10m tall were lit with fire, and you could feel the heat from these fires even standing 50m away from them. The road was crowded with spectators, police (to keep people behind barricades) and people carrying kirikos up and down and around the fires. It was a pretty windy night, so many people near the fires were christened with showers of fiery debris and ash. Like at last year's Wajima Taisai, Rob gave some of the residents a hand with carrying the kiriko. I have tried carrying them before, and being made from wood, they are very heavy and awkward things to manoeuvre, so no thanks for me this time round.. :P

One of the many kirikos, and the huge bonfire by the sea:


The tall fiery poles:


Things started winding down around 11pm, an early night perhaps in preparation for the next day's festivities, which we heard would conclude around 4am the following morning.

(Night-time photography is not my forte, and although I snapped over 200 shots, only about 10% of them came out decent. Using my tripod on this occasion was not too practical since we moved around a lot.)

Restaurant Yonemura is perhaps the finest we've been to. I booked this place (or rather, asked my supervisor to help book it for me) after I'd recently read a raving review about it. It's located in glitzy Ginza, on the fourth floor of one of the nicest department stores I've ever set foot inside. Indeed, I felt quite intimidated as I stepped inside the restaurant, dressed in my jeans and sneakers (with a nice top!), but the staff were very hospitable and friendly, and that helped put me at ease.

The restaurant is elegantly and tastefully laid out with a modern touch. When booking, you can choose to reserve seats at the counter or in the separate room - I chose to sit at the counter because the review I'd read mentions that at the counter you can observe the kitchen action in front of you. And I did not regret my counter-seat choice because we were quite fascinated and entertained watching the dozen or so chefs dashing around preparing the dishes. There were four seated at the counter (including us) and perhaps a couple of small groups in the adjacent room for lunch on this Saturday - so the ratio of chefs to patrons was about 1:1. There were no waitstaff - the chefs both prepared and served the dishes to us. I could not fault the excellent service.

View from our seats:


For lunch, we could choose from the 6000yen (~AU$60), 9000yen (~AU$90), or the 12000yen (~AU$120) courses. The food is a blend of French and Japanese styles and ingredients, and perhaps the best thing about the food is that the dishes are prepared using the ingredients available that day. This means that the menu is highly seasonal, so all the more reason for us to come back for a second visit to try a different fare. The chefs unfortunately do not speak much English (they probably know a fair bit of French though), but they still made the effort to tell us the name of each course as they were served to us. About halfway through the course and struggling with the Japanese, I asked one of the chefs if he could write down the menu, and added "in hiragana, thanks", and he was kind enough to accommodate me. In fact, we were not aware that lunch would be a 10-course meal until the chef handed to us the neatly written menu about halfway through the meal. I've spent more than an hour making sense of the names for each dish, which is not an easy feat considering the dishes have French names (try converting 'ratatouille' into its katakana counterpart, and then converting it back again!).

Soon after we were seated and ordered drinks (the ginger ale is really good), we were served thick slices of warm, freshly baked and gorgeously crusty French bread. The bread was so good, it was pretty difficult to restrain myself from filling up with too much bread at the expense of the meal. Each of the courses were carefully prepared and beautifully presented with gorgeous dishwares. And there were some really cute and ingenious pieces too. But the food: amazing, especially the first half of the meal. The latter half was a bit more ordinary, but still very good. I've given a description and the photo of each course below. Please keep in mind that I am translating from Japanese and katakana French into English so there are lots of room for error, but I'm trying my best!


First course: Gazpacho Jyunsaizoe Chèvre Mayonaisse i.e. Gazpacho with water shield shoots and goat's cheese mayo. The jyunsai (shoots of water shield) had a cool gel similar to aloevera gel, and a crispyness similiar to cucumber - we were quite intrigued by this vegetable. The gazpacho was deliciously full of flavour and the chèvre mayo added just the right amount of richness to the soup.

Second course: Hors d’œuvres no Santen Mori - three appetisers. From left: a) Mango, ham and torigai (cockle) with basil sauce; b) Tokobushi (abalone) and mushroom with escargot (snail) butter c) Fried Hamaguri (clam) with tsubu mustard. I really liked the combination of mango, ham and cockle - the sweetness of the mango went surprisingly well with the ham and cockle.




Third course: Foie Gras and Ayu Risotto, aka fattened goose/duck liver with sweetfish. My favourite dish (and yes, I am aware of the ethical issues surrounding foie gras). This is our first time trying foie gras, although we didn't know it at the time (the menu was given to us after this course). It was so beautiful, I don't really know how to describe it. We'd heard a lot about foie gras from watching countless episodes of Iron Chef, which of course left us yearning to try this expensive delicacy. The morsel of foie gras was simply pan-fried, which was a great way to introduce us to this delightful piece of foodie heaven. The texture was smooth in the melt-in-your-mouth kinda way, and the taste was divinely rich and buttery. Sorry, that's the best I can come up with (and no, it does not taste like liver pâté). Nestled under the foie gras is a small fried ayu, which is a type of river fish belonging to the salmon family known as sweetfish. It is so named because it has a sweet flesh, and is apparently highly prized (in Japan at least). The few occasions that we have eaten this fish (always fried) required us to consume the whole fish - head, guts and all. While I quite like eating the fish whole, the experience often leaves Rob wondering why a highly prized fish is eaten like so. He said that if it were not for the bitter innards of the fish, this would have been his favourite course.

Fourth course: Gyokairui Nama Harumaki - raw seafood springroll. The 'raw' in the title refers to the uncooked springroll. This was very well-made, like a maki sushi (the familiar sushi roll) with appropriate vegetables and complementary seafood. The chewy rice wrapper gave an interesting texture. This was quite a refreshing course and it worked well to clean the palate for the next course.




Fifth course: Suzuki Meunière with Tapenade and Ratatouille in Egg sauce - Japanese sea bass meunière with marinated chopped olives and vegetable sauce with egg. The ratatouille and egg is held in the egg shell, which you pour onto the fish and tapenade before eating. I thought that this was quite ordinary compared to the preceding courses.

Sixth course: Yaki-Nasu and Uni Capellini i.e. grilled eggplant and sea urchin roe/gonads with capellini (a pasta thinner than angel hair pasta). The chopped eggplant, uni and some chopped tomatoes were held in the tiny cup which you pour and mix with the capellini, which was already topped with chopped scallions and some gel. The uni was fresh and sweet, but this dish on the whole wasn't outstanding. Pasta, to me, is an everyday comfort food, whilst uni is a luxurious item - serving pasta with uni downplayed the excellence of uni.





I liked the clever and ingenious dish set - it's a cup and a saucer and lid, with a mini cup using the lid as the saucer:



Seventh course: Tanbagyuu and Kogamo steak - (Tanba beef and teal duck steak). A little research on the internet reveals that beef from Tanba in Hyogo is the best in Japan (think Kobe beef). The two meat pieces looked quite similar to each other, and we'd initially mistakenly thought both pieces were beef with different dressings. The beef steak piece was simply accompanied by its fat and a sliver of crisp-fried garlic, and the morsel of duck steak was accompanied with a creamy citrusy topping. Both were pretty good.




Eighth course: Choice between Shigureni Beef (soy-and-mirin beef) and Kare Raisu (Japanese curry rice) accompanied with ocha (Japanese tea). This was the most Japanese course of the meal. Of course, we got one of each so that we could sample both. The beef set was presented as an ochazuke which was delicious. The kare rice was also pretty good for what it was.




Ninth course: Oba and Blood Orange Sherbet (oba is another name for shiso). Served in a tiny glass, it worked well to clean our palates before dessert. I have to say, shiso-flavoured sherbet is not a bad idea!

Tenth course: Dessert accompanied by coffee or tea. We had a list of about 10 different desserts to choose from, and our choices were Orange Crème Brûlée and Fresh fruit Parfait. The crème brûlée was served with a rather bitter coffee icecream which would have been better appreciated by a coffee-lover. The parfait was quite good: sponge cake, fresh fruits and cornflakes (?) topped with good quality ice-cream. And the vanilla-infused tea is quite delicious.




This was a very good meal, and I'd say that it is probably the best yoshoku (western food) I've had in Japan. It's a bit pricey, but the excellent quality of the food and the fantastic service are enough to tempt us to return for another gastronomic feast.