10.06.07

A $5 Culinary Trip Through Tokyo (Part 2 of 3)

Posted in Food and Drink, Fujian, Japan, Travel Log at 5:34 am by Benjamin Ross

continued from A $5 Culinary Trip Through Tokyo (Part 1 of 3)

With a sour taste still in my mouth from the previous day’s 7-Eleven hoagie, I played it safe for my second breakfast in Japan…this of course meant another sushi bar. I found yet another cheap conveyor belt sushi joint in Shibuya (a hip shopping district in downtown Tokyo) and parked myself at the bar.

The sushi place I at my second day in Tokyo was almost an exact clone of the one I ate at on my first day…not that I’m complaining.

The setup was nearly identical to the conveyor belt sushi place where I had dined two days before, and the sushi and sashimi looked and tasted identical to those at the other place. At the end of my meal I could not decipher anything about the second sushi joint which was different from the first. Even the prices had been virtually identical. It led me to wonder if sushi preparation is more about standards and uniformity than uniqueness and creativity. Maybe somebody who has spent more than 3 days in Japan can fill in here.

Cost of meal: 700 yen (approx $6 USD) Final Verdict: 7…just like the other sushi place.

In addition to all of the tempting Japanese food Tokyo had to offer, it is impossible to walk too far in Tokyo without taking in the sights and smells of good ol’ hamburgers and fries. Whereas in most parts of Mainland China American fast food is still relatively exotic, American grease has seemingly been more so integrated into the Japanese culinary psyche. In Tokyo, small dive restaurants advertise for hamburgers, french fries, and steaks, often being served in the same storefronts as traditional Japanese cuisine, and rarely more expensive than Japanese alternatives. Japan also has several of its own homegrown American fast food restaurants, the most prominent I noticed was called Lotteria. For lunch on my second day in Tokyo, I gave it a shot.

Like most of the fast food restaurants I saw in Tokyo, the Lotteria I went to also had 3 stories. The first storey opened up to the street and consisted of the kitchen and ordering area, and the second and third floors were both tight, cramped-in dining rooms. Inside the dining rooms were Tokyoers of all ages and demographics, reading the newspaper, sending text messages, and taking slow, gradual bites out of their fast food. As I approached the ordering area, my eyes were immediately drawn to Lotteria’s current specialty item, the tandori chicken burger, which I ordered along with a hamburger on the side.

Japanese fast food at its finest. My personal recommendation goes to the Tandori Chicken Burger (top left)

Wrapped in soft pita bread, and topped with lettuce, onion, and tandori sauce, the tandori chicken burger provided a surprisingly zesty fusion of Indian cuisine and American fast food. It easily ranks up there with the Wendy’s Spicy Chicken and the Taco Bell 7-Layer burrito as one of the more innovative fast food creations I have sampled. The fries and the hamburger, however, were sub-par, comparable to those of the homegrown burger joints which have popped up all over China in recent years. I would liken it to an hour-old McDonald’s hamburger coupled with semi-stale KFC french fries. Not exactly a fast food all star lineup.

Cost: 520 yen (approx $4.50 USD) for the Tandori Chicken value meal, and 100 yen (approx 90 cents) for the hamburger; Final Verdict: 5, If I were to rate the meal separately, the tandori chicken would get an 8 and the burger and fries a 2.

For dinner on my second, and last evening in Tokyo, I met up with my old friend Andrew Houston, who has lived in Tokyo for over 5 years. Leaving the choice of dining establishments in his hands, he suggested a meal of yakitori.

Yakitori, or “grilled bird,” or in this case, grilled pork liver

Andrew took me to a small dive restaurant where we sat at the bar and he proceeded to order. Literally, “yakitori” means “grilled bird,” and I think they chose this name because it would have been too troublesome to use a more accurate name which would have been “anything possibly edible to humans…on a stick.” Our meal consisted of beef, pork, chicken, liver, and fish balls, all strung together on long, wooden toothpicks, and smothered in a thick sauce.

More yakitori, now with beef, shrimp, and fish balls

As we consumed our yakitori and drank Asahi beers, Andrew struck up a conversation in Japanese with one of the waitresses. After an apparent communication mishap, Andrew turned to me and said, “That waitress has a strong accent when she speaks Japanese. I think she might be Chinese.”

When the waitress came back to the table, I asked her, in Chinese, “Are you Chinese?”

The waitress let out the token “woooaahhhh” (It’s probably not everyday she runs into a Chinese speaking white guy in Tokyo), and replied, “We are all Chinese,” pointing to the two other waitresses.

Overhearing our conversation, the other waitresses came over to say hello to the pair of bilingual gringos.

“Where in China are you from?” I asked the first waitress.

I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised when she quickly responded “Fuzhou,” as my former Chinese residence is well-known for its large amount of its people going abroad, but I never expected the first Chinese person I met after leaving China would be from Fuzhou as well. When I told her, in the Fuzhou dialect, “I used to live in Fuzhou” (one of the few sentences I can say properly), her jaw nearly hit the ground. After several minutes of reminiscing about Fuzhou shopping districts and fish ball restaurants, the waitress mentioned to me that there was an area, just down the street, where all of the shop owners are from Fuzhou. Unfortunately it was nearly 11 o’clock and all of the stores had closed for the next evening.

Andrew and I finished our Yakitori and 2 rounds of Asahi beer, and after bouncing English, Japanese, and Chinese around the room for an hour, we paid our tab and called it a night.

Cost: 2100 yen (aprox $18 USD, total for 2); Final Verdict: another 7

It was refreshing to find Tokyo residents with whom I could communicate, and reinforced the fact that you typically don’t have to look very hard to find Chinese people, especially ones from Fuzhou, in most parts of the world.

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