Tokyo Day 5

Tokyo Day 5

Have you guessed where we were from this picture?

We went to the Tsukiji Fish Market for breakfast at the highly raved Sushi Dai!

No, we did not wake up at ungodly hours to visit the market for the auction. Dear thought about it but I was against sacrificing so much of our sleep. In the end, we compromised to reach the market by 9am for breakfast at Sushi Dai and hope that we will still see some of the action in the market.

The fish vendors were still buzzing around the market when we reached. 

 

Now that's dangerous stuff going on in the market!

A group of policemen were taking photos at one of the shops that sold liquor. For what purpose, I don't know. But it was quite an entertaining sight to see how they went about doing it. 

At the doorsteps. Waiting, waiting, waiting patiently. 

We encountered another super nice Japanese. He was in front of us in the queue and told us to 'take care' of his spot as he needed a toilet break. No big deal about that. Later, when Dear also wanted to go to the toilet and asked him for the directions, the man offered to bring Dear there!

We are finally in after 1hr 45mins of queuing!

We ordered the omakase set (¥3,900). First up: the Tuna belly.

Clockwise from top left: snapper, horse mackerel, sea urchin, flounder.

Thankfully the sea urchin did not stink and saved us from wondering about how real sea urchin tastes like.

I read up on sea urchin after the trip and learnt that freshness is paramount when it comes to preparing sea urchin. Apparently, a sea urchin that has been shucked for two hours can taste different from those fresh from the sea. 

Sad to say, the damage has been done at Midori Sushi and I don't think I'll ever be a fan of sea urchin.

Clockwise from top left: Surf clam, baby shrimp, (can't remember what it is), tuna roll

Clockwise from top left: Marinated Tuna, Eel, Tamago (which was very fluffy and sweet), and Dear's choice of cod sperm for his last sushi. 

The omakase set allows the customer to chose one sushi from their sushi menu as the finale of the meal. I chose the fatty Otoro while Dear wanted to be adventurous. You don't get this kind of thing in Singapore, he said. 

Even the chef was surprised when Dear pointed at the menu and said he wanted the cod sperm sushi. The chef pointed to the menu again to verify with Dear before grinning and said: "This is very delicious!"

So how does cod sperm taste like? According to Dear, it tasted like mayonnaise (because of the sauce used) and it bursts in the mouth consecutively as he chewed the sushi. His overall conclusion is that having so much sperm in his mouth made him felt violated. I leave you to figure out what he means.

It was definitely a fantastic meal and well worth the money. All the sushi were topped with thick slabs of seafood and melt in the mouth. 

Will I eat here again? Maybe, after I tried Sushi Daiwa and the other sushi restaurants in the market that are also said to be good and have a shorter queue.

To digest our sumptious meal, we walked to the luxury shopping district of Ginza. Along the way, we stopped at the food/grocery street outside the market. Vendors here would sell the seafood they bought from the market to the housewives.

They eat these giant peas here, not like the small ones we eat at the Japanese restaurants.

And this is how the wasabi plant looks like!

Spotted a cute chef at a grilled item stall, so I had to take his picture. Hehe!

There was nothing much for us to buy at Ginza, since we are very modest people. We also visited the 12-storey Uniqlo flagship store and the Abercrombie store which I always feel too shy to enter in Singapore. 

From Ginza, we took the train to Odaiba, a man-made area in Tokyo which houses the city's only beach.   

It has quirky structures that are good for photo-taking. Like this replica of the Statute of Liberty.

The Fuji TV station is also located here at Odaiba.

Food truck on the street outside the station.

The first animation display that we saw in shopping malls. 

We didn't want to walk around in the malls as all the shops seemed generic, so we decided to go back to Shinjuku for an izakaya dinner. 

Located near our hotel is a branch of the Tengu Izakaya restaurants. It was a good sign to see many locals eating here when we enter the restaurant. As we were about to find out, the food here is indeed good and cheap!

And before we talked about the food, we had another wonderful Japanese encounter. We wasn't sure which direction to walk to the restaurant and asked a lady to help. 

We showed her the street address and she has no idea where is the restaurant although it is nearby. She took her Iphone to search for our restaurant and looked for the location using the GPS, and walked us to the restaurant which was just across the traffic light junction! It's incredible how helpful she was!

Their beef cubes on hot plate. All the dishes are very flavourful, perhaps because they have to washed down by beer.

This had us struck. Super awsome beef suki yaki. The beef slices were so thin and tender after being lightly grilled in the sauce.

The best fish that he has ever eaten, that's how Dear described this grilled fish. The fish was juicy and crispy on the outside, very nicely grilled. 

The carbo of the night was fried rice. Not bad lah, but all the limelight has been stolen by the above dishes 

We staggered back to our hotel, drunk with a good hearty meal. And all for around S$40. I'm drooling just by looking at the pictures.

p.s I just realised by looking at this post that the meals we had were the highlight of the day. Hahaha.