The rest of that day and Tsukiji Fish Market

The museum was a little way away, in Ueno, but was quite easy to get to. The collection – a bit like the one on show currently at the Rijks – is a good basic introduction to Japanese art and artifacts, sufficient for someone to be able to tell the difference between make-e enamel and carved lacquer, but not much more detailed than that. Some beautiful Hiroshige woodcuts (though slightly underwhelming Hokusai ones), some great textiles (especially late-Edo, mid 19th Century ones) and bronzes and some fantastic screens.
I then wandered around the back streets of Ueno, trying to get to Asakusa to catch the boat back down south, but kept getting lost; this was not in itself problematic: I had (I thought) nothing I was late for, and it was nice to have look around the non-touristy bits of a Tokyo neighbourhood. My best find was a fantastic shop selling knives and I am – at the time of writing – kicking myself for not having bought any (though I slightly comfort myself with the thought that traveling across 4 continents with high-carbon sushi knives would probably have been both cumbersome and occasionally difficult from a customs point of view. Still...).
I managed to get to Asakusa just in time to get in to have a look around the main temple there, which was oddly underwhelming: huge and outwardly impressive, but without any sense of mystery, wonder or even clear purpose (not in the strict sense – there were people praying and performing religious rituals – but in a slightly esoteric feel-of-the-place sense) – a bit like St Peter's in Rome, in a way.
Undeterred and photo'ed up, I proceeded to the pier to catch the boat back south – only to find out that the last one had sailed for that day. So back to the metro for me – and no river views.
Having spent the day wandering around – and now definitely not needing to be anywhere specific – I decided to try out Adam and Eve, a spa-type joint that regularly makes every list of things to do in Tokyo, from Wallpaper's to Time Out's via Luxe Guide's. This is a typically Japanese affair – separate-gender, spartan-looking and damp-smelling huge baths of water are surrounded by low showers (roughly at waist level) and little stools: one strips off, rinses off the little stool and then showers sitting down, washing from the feet up, then plunges in the hot (or cold, if that way inclined) pools, goes to the sauna and – and this is really the point – gets scrubbed down by ferocious-looking stern Korean Grannies. The KGs are armed with loofah-mitts and set to work on you as you lie there, spending half an hour seeing how much (mostly) dead skin they can remove from every part of your body. Nominally, one wears oversized green cotton boxers for this part, but the KGs go where they need to go and generally completely ignore these – this is not a place for the modest or bashful. Every time a cycle of scrubbing is completed – toe to head on your back, on each side, on your front – and you think it might be over, you get doused in hot water and she starts again, certain that there is a flake of dead skin somewhere that she has not sought out as yet. In many ways, getting flayed would be quicker – but eventually, when it IS over, it does feel great.
The next morning was, I figured, the best time to do the Tsukiji Fish Market – officially the biggest in Asia, which makes this blogger wonder how it is not thus the biggest in the world. Any readers who know or suspect which one might be bigger, please let me know – New York? Billingsgate is nothing next to this, so don't bother with that one...
As with all retail markets, it starts and finishes early and requires the amateur to set off early and to dodge the gruff people for whom this is more of a living and less of a photo-op – but, still being somewhat jetlagged, the 4am start was actually surprisingly easy. The gruff-dodging was somewhat more difficult and presented the greatest sartorial challenge of the trip so far: what does one wear to a fish market on a freezing winter's morning? All of the guides suggested wellies and cast-offs that one doesn't mind getting wet and smelling of fish. Yours truly was, however, somewhat limited by the clothes that he actually had with him (and owned – am not sure I have wellies anywhere, let alone in Tokyo).
In the event, I was certainly the only person there in a designer floor-length black wool/ gold brocade coat (it's the only one I have with me, and going without one wasn't an option in February) – though, to my infinite delight, I did spot a woman in what was either a gold velour D&G tracksuit or (and this is what I secretly believe, because it makes me happier), possibly, a cat suit. i like to think that she was going for some sort of hunter/prey cat(suit)/fish thing, as a comment on the predatory and base evolutionary natures of our continued reliance on feeding off other living beings, but she could have just been mad. Or maybe that was all SHE had brought to Asia with her, and we're kind of in the same boat.
The most famous event at Tsukiji is the daily tuna auction that takes place just before 6am: buyers spend the hour or two prior to this walking up and down rows of huge, glistening open-mouthed tuna-giants, inspecting, prodding, opening stomach cavities with huge grappling hooks and generally sizing them up. The auction for the numbered fish is then conducted silently, using an antiquated system of hand signals that is most similar to the one horse-racing pundits use – completely incomprehensible to the uninitiated, clear as day to those taking part. Sadly, tourists are no longer allowed to see this, as too many were crowding in and disrupting the genuine working of the trades – but I did get some photos of the inspection rituals beforehand.
I then wandered up and down the seemingly endless rows of seafood, presented here in all it's guises like an aquatic Boschian tableau – creatures alive and dead, mouths agape, tentacles sprawled and teeth bared, creatures frozen and fresh, young and old, creatures from all of Earth's recent evolutionary periods, from the ancient to the recently evolved – all laid out to be bought in prodigious quantities, boxed, carted, driven away and to get to the punters in time for dinner.
Now, the way to a man's stomach is through a delectable cornucopia of piscine fauna, so thoughts quickly turned to sushi (while not an obvious 6am breakfast choice, I have no designated times for seafood and, as some will attest, will happily go through a dozen oysters at 5am). Mercifully – and rather obviously, really, there were a number of sushi restaurants nearby. Coming, as they did, 18 hours after three-star sushi – and 36 hours after two-star blowfish – I was worried that there would be a lot to live up to; had Mizutani spoiled me for life, dooming me to never being satisifed with anything short of his mastery? No, obviously – in the same way as Le Gavroche doesn't stop you appreciating a great steak in your prix fixe menu in Paris. And the comparison is not a bad one – the sushi was obviously very fresh, but the rice, the sizes, the wasabi, the soy were all... fine. No more than that – very enjoyable, great, worth going to – and worth going to again – but very much an everyday-sushi experience.

Sushi Mizutani

Yesterday morning, I had to be careful, as I had also booked a three Michelin star place for lunch (if I don't do it here, then where?) and wanted to avoid taking up room with other stuff – as well as avoiding any other flavours. So I headed into Ginza, both to find the restaurant in good time (it is the antithesis of the Parisian three-star restaurant: Taillevent is probably as difficult as any to find in Paris, being downstairs, but even that is clearly signposted and visible; Sushi Mizutani had a tiny sign in Japanese and was located off a dimly-lit tiny basement in an otherwise-unremarkable office block. You'd have to be really determined and really looking). Once I had found what I thought might be the place, I headed over to Ito-ya, a stationery shop not far from where I was going to eat, passing pretty much every designer shop that one can possibly imagine along the way (every unpreposessing and quiet-looking backstreet seems to be teeming with Etros and Loro Pianas, Valntino fighting for space with Tiffany to be seen). Ito-ya does all the things that WH Smith's does (though, obviously, more stylishly and replacing Bic with Montegrappa), but the main reason for going was Ito-ya 3, their shop in a back alleyway selling handmade papers, calligraphy brushes, wrapping paper etc. It was a stationery-fetishist's paradise, and I spent two hours browsing, demanding that their finest washi papers are produced for my perusal and spending, ultimately, half as much on one beautiful sheet as I would spend on the lunch that was to come. As I emerged into the sunshine, laden with my newly found goodies, I was as happy as a boy could possibly be.
Then it turned out that Sushi Mizutani had lost my reservation. Imagine the scene; the restaurant seats ten people around a counter, behind which Mizutani-san hand cuts and prepares the sushi, brushing each one with shoyu (I think?) before placing it before the person. Sushi is served one at a time, with the master deftly making sure that no-one has to wait too long and that everyone has had everything that is one the “menu” that day (there is no menu – while one could, theoretically, ask for specific items, no-one does and all diners literally entrust (omakase) the master with their lunch, happy to be served by him what he will). Into this scene of trendy eaters and bepearled genteel ladies who lunch, a (lone, there were no others) gaijin boy bursts in, all excited and carrying bags of paper, speaking barely three words of Japanese. The room, hardly the size of my bedroom in London, follows the animated conversation between me (who genuinely DID reserve, months ago – and who realises that if I don't get lunch now, I won't have another chance either here or in Jiro (which was the other possibility, and where Mizutani-san used to work), since both are booked up months in advance). I cannot help but feel that it was all very unJapanese on my part, and I should probably have bowed out rather than attempting to argue my case, but I'm very glad I didn't. Soon, Mizutani-san himself intervened and told me to sit down – he was pretty sure there would be enough rice (the main worry) and the distraction was clearly not helping the other diners. A patron who had helpfully translated for me (and who, as it turns out, eats there regularly), indicated a free stool next to him (one of only two free places).
The sushi (and it was all sushi, no sashimi) was exquisite, the Platonic ideal of what sushi should be like. The rice was perfect, the amount of wasabi just right, the fish fresh (except the ten-day-aged tuna, which is bought after having been caught by just one fisherman (ie not by a trawler) and quickly cut to drain the blood (a process known, I am told, as ikejime), before being stored on ice. It is aged by Mizutani himself, who judges exactly when it is ready. Before he even starts the careful aging process, tuna fish cost around US$60,000 – 100,000 each). The order in which it was served was carefully thought out, with flavours of one piece seemingly complementing and gently merging with the next. The toro, the tuna belly, was I-want-to-burst-into-tears-of-joy good – it was possibly as close to gastronomic perfection as one could get, rivaling the Bresse chicken at the George V experience a few years ago.
After most of the diners had left, Mizutani-san became more talkative, as it was just me and my translating benefactor left still there – he pointed out that my long coat (embroidered with two gold cockerels or phoenixes fighting) was rather like a tattoo in style (my co-diner pointed out to me: “He does have rather yakuza tastes. I think it's all the sushi knives” - tattoos are still heavily associated with gangs and gangsters in Japan). Mizutani then got me to translate a dedication that Robuchon had left for him in a Michelin guide (seemingly assuming that my speaking English would make me a dab hand at French as well – though, to be fair, I had more trouble with the handwriting than the meaning) before saying that he has only just been to London last year (“Good city. Bad fish.” was the translation I got). I then got a cheeky photo with him and left to go on to the Tokyo National Museum.

Tokyo Day 2

The next day, I retraced some of my steps in daylight, confirming again that prices for designer goods are ridiculous (100% more than London, by my estimation, in some cases) and spending ages in Omote-sando Hills, the recently (two years ago) opened Ando-designed shopping mall, which cleverly takes after Wright's Guggenheim in following a spiral from top to bottom, meaning that you're more or less forced to go past all of the shops. I bought a lot of things I don't really need, but such is the nature of the beast.
I also headed to the Meiji shrine, just to the east of there – it is probably the most important shrine in Tokyo (albeit not the oldest, by some margin) and is positioned in a lovely park, which was looking very beautiful in the cold winter sunshine. There's also the old Imperial garden there, with a pond with huge koi carp, an Iris garden etc. All very lovely – photos, again, to follow.
After that, I grabbed lunch in Maisen, the tonkatsu pork place that is quite small and tends to have queues round the block for people to get lunch or an afternoon snack. It was, as with everything, delicious and I'm tempted to go back there as I type this.
I headed home in the afternoon – again, for a little sleep and to get ready for dinner, which I'd booked ages in advance. Usukifugu Yamadaya (in the photo) is one of Tokyo's two best (according to Michelin, at least) fugu restaurants – that's blowfish, to the Western world. I had read how long it takes to fully master the art of processing and preparing the lethally-poisonous-if-not-done-right fugu and had seen glowing reviews of Yamadaya on Chowhound and other foodie sites, so was curious to try it. The fact that it had just been awarded two Michelin stars, in spite of only having opened a year previously, was also a recommendation of sorts.
The dinner was great, as expected: Ed and I decided to go for one of the menus, which was described fairly vaguely by our (delightful and sweetly coy) waitress when we chose it, but was explained in stunning detail once the dishes arrived. After a couple of small courses of little bits of pork and chicken as starters, fugu began arriving – as sashimi (served with chives and monkfish liver and dipped in ponzu), as tempura, fugu semen sacs on sushi and, finally, in a broth that was prepared on a hotplate at the table – even the fins were used in hot, smoky-fish-smelling sake. It was very unusual to have an entire meal based around one ingredient, but it was the perfect time to do it (because of breeding patterns, fugu is best in winter) – and the perfect place, with typically Japanese footwear-off for patrons, attentive service and a subtly-yet-beautifully decorated private room.
The taste of the fugu was subtle, as much to do with texture as it was with taste in the Western sense (though I think I'm not being unfair when I say that a lot of Japanese cuisine is self-consciously about texture, so this is not a surprise). The way it is served added to the taste – which was not very “fishy” (except when smoked in the sake) and quite subtle. After a while, one could feel a very-barely-perceptible tingling in the mouth, which was pleasant and added to the layers of taste (this is, actually, one of the effects of tetradotoxin, the poison inside the fish and, if it develops further, is the first indicator that a potentially lethal dose has been ingested. There are currently no known antidotes, with the victim being paralysed-but-conscious as their organs shut down; the main treatment is a lot of fluids to try and speed up the liver and kidney function in processing the toxin and expelling it from the body).

Brussels and Tokyo Day 1

Tried to write this earlier in the week, but Blogspot and I had unresolved issues about uploading pictures, so I battled with it for a bit and then totally gave up. Still haven't quite worked out how to do this, so will have to do the blog separately and the pictures to accompany it will follow in due course.

So – it's Friday morning here in Tokyo – 7.02 am to be precise. I've just got back from the fish market and, since nothing and no-one else is alive at this time, climbed back into bed with the laptop. In the last seven days, I have packed all of my possessions in Amsterdam, left and gone to Brussels, had a great 18 hours there, gone to London to see my parents and, briefly, my mate Dan and arrived in Tokyo. I have now been here for three days, slowly getting over the jet lag and exploring the city.

Brussels was fun – I have always had unremittingly bleak reviews of it, with descriptions that placed it somewhere between a pointless waste of bricks and mortar and purgatory: not exciting enough to be really bad (Milton Keynes it ain't), but certainly a long way away from “good”. Overall, I must say that I disagree – it is certainly a lovely place to spend a day or two. I went to a rather fun place called (unpromisingly) “Belga Queen” for dinner on Friday night – a great oyster bar with an unfussy but well-matched wine list (Alsatian Pinot Gris is where it was at that night) and huge platters of all sorts of marine wildlife that looked like something faintly Boschian. Met up with a friend for a drink subsequently but, all in all, a comparatively early night. The next (bitterly cold) morning was spent walking around town admiring the sights and passing the time in opulent chocolate shops. All very civillised – and just in time for the Eurostar to London.

Continuing the gastronomic theme, has a great night at the Joel Robuchon place next to the Ivy, which I still hadn't been to. Most of the meal was good, except the big hunk of milk-fed veal that I had as my main, which was absolutely superb and entirely worth going there (and possibly to London, depending on where you're coming from) for.

Sunday was mostly packing stuff (thanks Dan) and then Monday was the flight to Tokyo. Now, I know that this is hardly news, but I am always amazed by how awkward and difficult BAA try to make your life whenever you try to use one of their grey, decrepit airports: it is really an art, of sorts. Sullen men and women in fading uniforms the colour of boredom usher you through various hoops, each of which tries to repeat on the previous one as much as possible and each of which is – of course – absolutely paramount to world and state security (this isn't the place to discuss – yet again – the continued replacement of “living” with “security” that has been the hallmark of 21^st century government policy, but, suffice it to say, I am still not happy about it). The shops, carpets and walls look more and more like JFK at the low-point of its existence in the 90s.

ANYway – once that was all out of the way, I was safely cantilevered into my seat on Virgin – the flight was fine, in that I managed to sleep through a lot of it. A side-note to Virgin though – including bento boxes as one of the menu choices: good. Making the contents inedible: bad.

The first thing that I found interesting about Tokyo was the petrol/ liquid carrying trucks on the motorway – I wish I had a picture: they are very VERY shiny silver metal, with no branding. They are a thing of beauty – spotlessly clean quicksilver concave cylinders, reflecting a chunky, happy reality back at the passers by. Joyful.

I am staying with my friend Ed in Tokyo, who lives (though I didn't realise this when he first kindly offered to put me up) in the very centre of things, about 5 minutes stroll from Omote-sando Dori and thus very close to Shibuya and Harajuku, among others. Quite apart from that, his house is a thing of Ando Tadao designed beauty, the sort of effortless tranquil human-centred simplicity that Ando is famous for. Most of the next two days would be spent in trying to find something that would quite match that one building – and while Tokyo managed to do it cumulatively, it is still hard to think of any one thing that won me over quite so simply and persuasively.

Although I had got some sleep on the plane, I landed at what was 10am here and 1am in London; I was thus fine for the first few hours, but turned progressively more vegetative as the day wore on; really, I had to have a little nap and didn't get out and exploring until late afternoon. That evening was spent looking at the beautiful/ bizarre/ awe-inspiring buildings on Omote-sando (few were more than two out of three): the Tod'ses, Louis Vuittons, Diors and Pradas of this world have taken to commissioning ever-more-elaborate boutiques to line that street, and photos of a few of them will appear when I get my act together. I also ended up in Shibuya for a bit, with a bit of uber-kitch Takeshita street thrown in for good measure. Dinner was a little local chicken place, which was absolutely perfect and exactly what was needed.

A little bit of Brussels and Tokyo, part 1

One week until I leave Amsterdam

So - leave Amsterdam in exactly a week - then a night in Brussels, two nights in London and off to Tokyo on the 18th of February.

Check back after that for details of all of my exciting adventures.