Food, food, and more food

The above is not food I actually ate, but it was consumed in my presence. Mike Murray got a rice ball and just thought it had something crunchy in it, like tempura. When we got to looking at it, lo and behold, his 7-11 rice ball had baby eel in it. Eyes and all.

I just wanted to gross you out with that... onto the real post:

Three kinds of food you should know if you ever come to Japan are: 1. tonkatsu, 2. kaiseki, and 3. soft-serve ice cream. This is, of course, outside of the usual suspects of sushi, udon, soba, and ramen.

Tonkatsu usually refers to breaded (in panko), fried, pork cutlets served with delicious garlicky, hot sauce over shredded cabbage. It is unbelievably good and light when done at the right place. In Tokyo, we went to a restaurant called "Maisen" which is known for its tonkatsu and is a converted bathhouse (weird when you think about it). The place we went tonight had you grind your own toasted sesame seeds in with the sauce to give it some fresh spice.

Kaiseki must mean "little food that often jiggles" because that's what it usually is visually. In actuality, it's the haute cuisine home to Kyoto that we've been treated to at a couple of group dinners. There are something like 6 courses ranging from single serving appetizer bites to single sashimi to bowls of soup to rice. When we were on Naoshima, the kaiseki included all of the following: jellyfish, conger eel, herring roe, firefly squid, hamo eel, water shield, perch, and turtle. Mmm. Actually, if it weren't such tiny, tiny portions, it'd be delicious, but that's why they give you the rice at the end (to fill you up). Those are normal-sized chopsticks, so, you can see how small the little bites were.

And the greatest of all Japanese food, the soft-serve ice cream. This sustains me on our 7-mile hikes through every city in Japan. It's not a real day if we don't have ice cream. This is ginger flavored below, but the best so far has been black sesame (I was so excited about this today that I had already eaten some before I could bring myself to taking a picture).