Japanese Foods

A recent design trip to Japan had many high points - rocketed around the country on the shinkansen, from Tokyo, to Matsumoto to Hamamatsu and back to Tokyo. But top of the list of experiences is always the food. I arrived at Narita after an 11 hour flight, pretty knackered, and then did a three hour stint by local train up into the cool Nagano mountains. By the time I'd met my clients I was hungry enough to eat a horse. Just as well because the first thing to appear on the table (in traditional tatami setting) was horse sashimi. That's raw horse. I've eaten beef carpaccio, steak tartar, and plenty of sashimi of the fish variety but there's something about horse sashimi that makes you immediately consider vegetarianism. Here's a shot of some sashimi (piscine not equine) that I had in a Tokyo restaurant later on that week. Lovely.

Now then Brits; stop going on about sushi when you mean sashimi and vice versa. Sushi is artistic pieces of cooked rice often topped with raw fish (and many other things besides), or rolls of the same, or indeed many other carefully created forms. Sashimi is just raw cuts of fish, artfully sliced in a certain bite-sized portion and usually eaten with soy and hot wasabi which you mix together in a little bowl with your hashi.

Here are some more shots of well oishi things that I consumed enthusiastically. Some mouth-watering saury, a small, long, thin kind of a fish. And just look at that beautiful green glazed dish.

Some high quality sake. Of the dry, cold variety - when it arrived I said "Ahhh. Very Japanese, very zen the way the glass is placed off-centre in the tray like that". They said "no - they were probably just in a hurry..."

And then another lovely tasty; some matsutake tea. Matsu = pine and take = mushroom, so that's pine mushroom - a kind of boletus fungus in fact. It is much prized and in October is shin; appropriately seasonal.