dinner and drinks
After a very busy Sunday, I spent much of Monday relaxing, using the computer, and so on. That evening, however, one of the English-language students had invited Ben and Berek out for dinner and I was welcome to come along.
I took this picture of Berek as our train downtown to Shinjuku was pulling into the train station at Koganei:
I thought it was a fun picture with the blur of the train in the background as Berek stood there, unmoving (glaring at me in something approach disdain, I think). A reflection of Ben and me is just visible in train window.
After meeting up with the student at the Shinjuku train station and some discussion of restaurants, they settled on what turned out to be an incredibly good restaurant atop one of the skyscrapers, with an incredible view:
I believe the restaurant was called "Hibiki" and is on the 49th floor of the Shinjuku Nomura Building.
I can't recall the half of what we had to eat, but little handcrafted ceramic dishes of exquisitely good food kept appearing for quite some time. Before and during dinner I had a couple of snifters shochu, a kind of Japanese whiskey, perfectly clear, and made from things like rice, sweet potato, and unrefined sugar, smooth and delicately flavored.
During dinner we were invited over to a side table where one of the chefs was killing and filleting eels, snatching them one-by-one from a tank where they were squirming, plunging them into ice-water to stun and quiet them, then cutting their necking, implaging their heads into the table, slitting them lengthwise, and deftly boning them. All of this took only a matter of seconds per eel. And they tasted pretty good too once we got them served up, grilled in a couple of different sauces.
After dinner we decided to head over to the Park Hyatt Hotel where much of the film Lost in Translation was set, both in order to gawk at the place ("Bill Murray took this elevator!") and to have some drinks in one of the bars atop its three towers.
On the way, however, we crossed through a plaza that featured a sculpture that was rather disconcerting for a Philadelphian to find in the middle of Tokyo:
We also passed by the 797 foot high Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, with its twin towers reaching higher into the Tokyo night sky than any other building in the city:
Along many of the streets, particularly after dark, it seemed, there were yakitori and ramen stands selling the Japanese version of "fast food"--grilled chicken skewers and bowls of steaming noodles. This one is a ramen stand:
We finally arrived at the Park Hyatt and made our way up to the 41st floor Peak Lounge and Bar, which has a garden of bamboo as its centerpiece, lit during the day by the sun shining through a pyramid of glass atop the hotel. At night the lounge is lit by paper-covered lanterns:
We had considered visiting the New York Bar and Grill where the lounge act in Lost in Translation sang, but the cost was prohibitive. We were compensated, however, when we found how generous the cocktails turned out to be at the Peak Lounge, especially by Tokyo standards.
We took our time talking, enjoying the view, and leisurely sipping our drinks, in my case a Singapore Sling--the original version, made with pineapple juice, gin, cherry brandy, cointreau, grenadine, and bitters. A somewhat girlie cocktail, no doubt, but quite enjoyable, nontheless.
After making our way back down to ground level and back home by train, I slept quite well, savoring the experience of such excellent food, drink, and architecture.
(continue to next post: harajuku and shibuya)
I took this picture of Berek as our train downtown to Shinjuku was pulling into the train station at Koganei:
I thought it was a fun picture with the blur of the train in the background as Berek stood there, unmoving (glaring at me in something approach disdain, I think). A reflection of Ben and me is just visible in train window.
After meeting up with the student at the Shinjuku train station and some discussion of restaurants, they settled on what turned out to be an incredibly good restaurant atop one of the skyscrapers, with an incredible view:
I believe the restaurant was called "Hibiki" and is on the 49th floor of the Shinjuku Nomura Building.
I can't recall the half of what we had to eat, but little handcrafted ceramic dishes of exquisitely good food kept appearing for quite some time. Before and during dinner I had a couple of snifters shochu, a kind of Japanese whiskey, perfectly clear, and made from things like rice, sweet potato, and unrefined sugar, smooth and delicately flavored.
During dinner we were invited over to a side table where one of the chefs was killing and filleting eels, snatching them one-by-one from a tank where they were squirming, plunging them into ice-water to stun and quiet them, then cutting their necking, implaging their heads into the table, slitting them lengthwise, and deftly boning them. All of this took only a matter of seconds per eel. And they tasted pretty good too once we got them served up, grilled in a couple of different sauces.
After dinner we decided to head over to the Park Hyatt Hotel where much of the film Lost in Translation was set, both in order to gawk at the place ("Bill Murray took this elevator!") and to have some drinks in one of the bars atop its three towers.
On the way, however, we crossed through a plaza that featured a sculpture that was rather disconcerting for a Philadelphian to find in the middle of Tokyo:
We also passed by the 797 foot high Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, with its twin towers reaching higher into the Tokyo night sky than any other building in the city:
Along many of the streets, particularly after dark, it seemed, there were yakitori and ramen stands selling the Japanese version of "fast food"--grilled chicken skewers and bowls of steaming noodles. This one is a ramen stand:
We finally arrived at the Park Hyatt and made our way up to the 41st floor Peak Lounge and Bar, which has a garden of bamboo as its centerpiece, lit during the day by the sun shining through a pyramid of glass atop the hotel. At night the lounge is lit by paper-covered lanterns:
We had considered visiting the New York Bar and Grill where the lounge act in Lost in Translation sang, but the cost was prohibitive. We were compensated, however, when we found how generous the cocktails turned out to be at the Peak Lounge, especially by Tokyo standards.
We took our time talking, enjoying the view, and leisurely sipping our drinks, in my case a Singapore Sling--the original version, made with pineapple juice, gin, cherry brandy, cointreau, grenadine, and bitters. A somewhat girlie cocktail, no doubt, but quite enjoyable, nontheless.
After making our way back down to ground level and back home by train, I slept quite well, savoring the experience of such excellent food, drink, and architecture.
(continue to next post: harajuku and shibuya)
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