Ebisu Food Tour

I successfully travelled to the Shake Shack by Ebisu Station where I lost some time by ordering then consuming a coffee shake. You got a numbered device which was meant to flash and bleep when you could collect - mine didn’t but I waited by the counter. Quite refreshing on this warm day.

I met up with Chise there who took me on a splendid food tour. As we went around we talked about matters Japanese and Chinese and I learnt a lot. To my joy she knew of the Japanese films and TV I was into.

Japanese has three different character sets, two phonetic scripts Hiragana and Katakana, and Kanji which are a selection of Chinese characters. Knowing how to pronounce different Kanji is an art form. So the Chinese character for sun (ri) can come out as “hi” or “bi” or “nichi” or “ni” as in “Nihon” which is what the Japanese call Japan. The Chinese character for family (jia) can come out as “ie” for house or as “ka” as in kazoku for family. Sometimes the characters have Chinese like sounds so three is the same sound in both languages.

I had sashimi with warm sake at the first place where I was worried I was going to have to sit cross-legged! I seemed to do most of the eating which I was embarrassed by. That was the poshest of the joints we went to. Chise’s company do a lot of food tours and it seemed like we kept meeting other of their groups as we went around! We took our shoes off at the first place placing them in white plastic bags which they carefully collected when we left.

Next stop was a yakitori place where we had chicken and beef and leek on skewers. The otoshi starter there was edamame beans in the pod I blundered and tried to eat them as mange tout but that was silly! That was a place where the menu was written on wooden slats hung on a wall which could be turned around if they ran out of a certain dish. Had a soju based drink dosed with lemon and soda - Chise told me soju was originally Japanese shochu.

Lastly we went to a very crowded yokocho ‘alley’ (really inside a building) where we had fried noodles and a prawn mixture. There were people smoking there apparently okay in izakayas which are like pubs which serve drink and food together.

Lastly Chise cleansed my palette with some tasty ice cream before I sadly said goodbye to her. A great evening.