Thursday, September 30, 2010

Tokyo Day 1



After enduring a ten hour flight and the hour and half train ride we were really hankering for some authentic Japanese cuisine.  We entered a restaurant that captured our eyes only to be told they were full. This place looked fantastic, we decided we would try again, so we hit the streets in search of beer, scotch and sake. We topped up on liquid goodness and returned to our chosen eatery.  As we entered the front door the manager approached us and informed they don’t have English menus. This guy obviously didn’t realise that we were craving authentic cuisine – we weren’t interested in eating with the other Westerners. He then informed the restaurant only serves chicken as it’s a Chicken Tori restaurant – we love chicken! In our first night in Toyko we found a great place to eat.

We sit down and they pass us menu's with English translations - (I thought he said no English?). We order and the chicken starts rolling out. Well I guess you could call it chicken, but to simplify things when we say “chicken” we mean every part of the chicken that is not recognised as chicken. We were served skewers of gizzards, cartilage, hips, fat and god knows what else. It was like eating skewers of rubber cooked with a nice smoky flavour.  Jon invented an awesome technique of drowning the chicken straight to his stomach with Asahi – removing this requirement to chew and therefore taste the “chicken”. We were all so traumatised by the affair that we had to cleanse our digestive systems with some Big Macs.

We've enclosed a section of the menu for your viewing pleasure
.