Roots and Grubs

One night in Tokyo

Posted by mamster on Thursday, June 24, 2010

One thing I wondered about Japan was whether we would get tired of Japanese food. This sort of thing has happened to me before—I’ve had pizza in Bangkok and pancakes in Paris—and I don’t see any shame in it. Here’s what happened in Tokyo.

On our third or fourth day in Japan, while we were walking back to our hotel, I said to Iris, “You know, if you’d like to have Western food for dinner one night, that’s fine with me.”

“Then I’d like to have Western food tonight,” said Iris.

“Okay, sure,” I said. “What are you thinking? Burgers? Pizza?”

“Hmm…Chinese dumplings.”

“Uh, okay. I bet we could ask the front desk to recommend a gyoza place in the neighborhood.”

“Great. Hey, that looks good.” It was a display of plastic tempura shrimp at a place right next to our hotel. “Let’s have that tonight.”

“Works for me.” When we came down for dinner, the place was closed. But they’d left a map on the door, pointing around the corner. We followed it to an old two-story house. “Tempura ga arimasu ka?” I asked tentatively. “Hai!” We left our shoes at the bottom of a ladder-like staircase that would have made an American building inspector laugh hysterically. We ascended to a tatami room, sat on the floor, and ordered off a picture menu.

Iris ordered four enormous tempura shrimp with rice; I had the combo, which consisted of three items on rice: (1) a small whole fish, (2) a shrimp, (3) and a bunch of random vegetables and seafood formed into a patty, battered, and fried. We also had tea and pickles. I didn’t get a picture of any of this, so just imagine shrimp bigger than your face.

I don’t know if this was coincidence or a known fact, but every time we ate in an upstairs tatami room, the waitstaff consisted of elderly women with the demeanor of gruff diner waitresses. This was not at all unpleasant. I especially enjoyed my fried kisu fish (a small whiting). Iris ate two of her shrimp and ate the batter off the other two, presenting me with two naked shrimp. The total price was about $40.

Later, after we survived the trip downstairs, I looked up the restaurant and found that we’d eaten at Daikokuya, which has been serving giant shrimp in that location since 1887.

You can watch a short video about the restaurant here.

Outside of breakfast, the subject of Western food never came up again.

Related posts:

1. Not Tunisian night
2. What I want to tell you about Tokyo
3. The book of shrimp

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