Day 1 - Poisonous Fugu

Day One (Sun):	Narita Airport - Nippori - Shinjuku
Lunch:	On the plane
Dinner:	Fugu course at a specialist restaurant
	Torafukutei (not the TorafuGUtei chain), Shinjuku

Narita Airport

Yahoo Japan's weather prediction lied! It was supposed to be a day of sun and clouds, but our plane descended towards a wet and dark Narita. And it's only 2:15PM!

The first impression of Narita from the sky is...how come there's so much farmland and green fields..I thought it's a suburb of Tokyo. (I realized later that it's in the next prefecture.)

An old officer was directing the traffic (Japan passport holders to the left side, Gaijin to the right) at the entrance to the immigration lineup for foreigners and speaking something to us (in Japanese of course) as we walked by. Hmm...I think he probably knew that most people in the lineup won't understand what he said.

Now how do I buy a regular (the cheapest fare) Keisei ticket to Shinjuku? I wasn't sure if the ticket counter spoke any English and so I started punching the buttons on a ticket vending machine. The buttons had names of some of the platforms on it, but somehow I thought the calculation was backwards. So I ended up going to the ticket counter.

The guy spoke English! Well, two word sentences, but better than my Japanese anyway. Two tickets to Nippori. Onegaishimasu. Hai? 4000 yen? Uh no, the cheaper ticket... Okay 2 tickets to Nippori for 2000 yen. That's not too bad.

We hopped on a Tokkyu (express, ie. skipping smaller stations) train towards Tokyo on the Keisei line and spent most of the 80 minutes watching the ornate house roofs and our fellow passengers...why are high school kids dressed in school uniform on a Sunday? The 1000 yen ticket got us to Nippori but now we've got to hop on the JR Yamanote line to Shinjuku. Ticket window time again. Okay Japanese 101 here we go.

Me: Shinjuku ni. (presenting our two Keisei tickets)
Attendant: Sambyaku hachiju en

Sugoi! My first conversation in Japanese in years lasted two words. And we got tickets to Shinjuku!

Shinjuku

The Yamanote was only slightly crowded, as it was a dark and rainy late afternoon on a Sunday. The next hour after arriving at Shinjuku came a big test of navigation and speed -- I had to pickup reservation of my Odakyu Romance Car tickets before it closes at 6PM, AND get two Sanrio Puroland tickets from the ticket vendors outside of Shinjuku Nishiguchi before they close at 7PM. All that in a totally foreign landscape of convoluted but interconnected paths. And pouring rain. And I had to leave my wife to guard the luggage. It was not fun. Even the two Tokyoites I asked (my Japanese miraculously came alive..don't ask me how) didn't know where the Odakyu ticket centre for Gaijin was (I went to the Odakyu ticket centre for locals but my reservation wasn't inside their system). Somehow I found a small English sign and found the ticket centre exactly at 6PM.

To get to the hotel in pouring rain we decided to take the bus, which I knew was called Shintoshin Junkansen (new city centre roundtrip). We jaywalked (with luggage and all) to the big bus loop only to find out that our bus only stops where we originally came out of the subway. Orz...

So we dropped off our luggage at Shinjuku Washington (checking in was smooth...the frontdesk spoke fluent English) and headed to our first real tour spot -- the FUGU restaurant.

Gourmet Spot #1: The Poisonous Fugu - Torafukutei, Shinjuku
[UPDATE July 2008: The Shinjuku branch's site is down and it may have closed its doors. If interested, please check out the Ikebukuro branch.]

This is fugu (pufferfish).

Its legendary status is in part due to the fact that its liver and ovaries contain enough poison to kill many adults, and there is no antidote once you discover the main symptom of lip and tongue numbing. People die every year, but the unique sweetness of the meat still draws millions of fans. And we were about to add to the fan list.

The restaurant was called Torafukutei, not to be confused with the TorafuGUtei chain. I chose this place because the dinner courses were very reasonably priced for a fugu restaurant, where 10000+ yen courses are quite normal. After all, you live or die depending on the skill of the chef.

We were given a private room of traditional dark wood decor with lantern lighting. The waitress spoke some English, "This is fish. And beef hotpot," as she pointed to the 5000-yen-upwards courses. I think she was very surprised when we ordered one 3000 yen and one 4000 yen course AND THEN produced a 10%-off-coupon from Hotpepper.
[UPDATE July 2008: Coupon no longer available online -- pick up a printed copy of Hotpepper lying around subway stations maybe.]



The first course was Fugu Kawa Yubiki -- a boiled fugu skin salad with ponzu and red pepper. Like most fish skin it was quite chewy, but had to depend on the sauce to bring out its flavor.



We ordered a cup of hirezake (wine infused with fugu fin). The waitress lighted up the fugu fin and covered the cup to infuse the flavor of the flame broiled fin. Very intensely fragrant. It's said to get people drunk easily, but didn't fell a light drinker like me.



Here comes my favorite dish of this meal. For a 3000-4000 yen meal We expected about 6-8 slices of Tessa (fugu sashimi), but we got 20 per person! I'm not sure how Tessa was supposed to taste (at 3000 yen it surely wasn't wild fugu), but the sweetness of the meat was very noticeable and distinct. Not the mirugai kind of sweetness, but a more subtle *umami* taste. And the chewiness of the meat brought me to keep chewing and tasting the meat for a long time.



Then a waiter brought the stove for our Sumiyaki Fugu (charcoal broiled). Note the two sauces. I liked the darker sauce the best, but I had no idea what it was (Aka Miso + Mirin?).



And this is how the broiled fugu looked like. We joked about how similar the texture was to chicken breast, except the taste was of a sweet and *very* fresh fish.



Then came the big Tecchiri, which was a hotpot of fugu chunks (with bones) and vegetables. By now all of the fish except for the head and the internal organs were used in this meal (just count...skin, fillet, fin, meat and bones).



Another waitress came and prepared the last dish for us. She was surprised when I asked to take a picture...Watashi mo?...and then giggled and posed. The dish consisted of mixing cooked rice and eggs to the remaining soup in the hotpot.



Last but not least, the Zosui. It seemed that the the entire sweetness of the fish went into the broth. It was incredibly *umami* for a fish broth.

I did get a little diarrhea symptom right after the meal...food poisoning? The scary thought crossed my mind for an quick instant, and then my reasoning told me that fugu poisoning wasn't like that!

Daimanzoku! Crossing off one item on my list of THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE. (This would sound much more ominous before the meal.)

Food Bill for 2 persons:
Yaki Fugu Set	3129 yen
Tecchiri Set	4179 yen
Hirezake	735 yen
(apply -10% coupon and 5% service charge)
Total	~7600 yen