Day 14 – My Trip to Japan

  Posted on June 18, 2014  by Leslie Blythe  1 comment

Day 14 – My Trip to Japan

Today was the last full day in Japan. We were invited to lunch with a business colleague of my husband to Saryo in Akasaka.  We were served in an elegant private room, furnished with hanging scrolls, flower arrangements and hori-kotatsu seating (tatami mats with a hole in the floor around the table, for more comfortable seating). 

We stopped for a drink at the Old Imperial Bar in the Imperial Hotel.  A salute to the architectural heritage of Frank Lloyd Wright, with motifs from the 1923 Imperial, and masterfully concocted spirits from around the world, the Old Imperial Bar is our main bar and a beloved Tokyo institution. 

We had dinner at Kishinobo, which first opened in Osaka in 1950, this small and cozy restaurant specializing in kushikatsu (deep-fried skewers of food). Every day it prepares more than 40 different kinds of meat, seafood, and vegetable kushikatsu, drawn from more than 100 in-house recipes. A progression of skewers is served one at a time until you say stop (if you like one especially well, you can ask for it again), along with the restaurant’s own special tartar sauce, miso sauce, sweet-and-sour sauce, and other sauces for dipping.   It was delicious!

Coffee Jelly for dessert!

You put your used wooden skewers in the fish mouths….