Red Bull, Red Meat, and Febreeze.
Our last night in Tokyo was to be spent back in the hip Shi BOO YAH neighborhood. We were to meet Tim’s Red Bull Athlete Manager in Japan, Arnie Ueno, at the Hachiko Dog statue again and we would be heading to dinner somewhere in the neighborhood.
When we got to the statue we immediately heard Arnie calling for us and he introduced us to his co-worker, Ai, pronounced “Eye.” Or “I,” eye suppose.
As we walked our way through the neighborhood everything seemed all too familiar. We were no more than two blocks away from our late night Ramen establishment.
Something I found interesting about Tokyo was how everything existed on the vertical. On every business sign hanging on every business you would find 1F, 2F, 3F, etc. As you could probably guess, these number/letter combos indicate on which floor you could find your preferred establishment.
The street level of each building rarely housed more than a hallway to an elevator. Into the elevator you would go where you would press the button for your desired floor. Depending on the establishment to which you were patronizing, you would step out of the elevator into a place much more desirable than the street level entrance.
In our case on this evening, we stepped into a small rock garden and then through sliding doors into an ultra-contemporary foyer where customers’ shoes lined the wall.
I hoped my feet didn’t stink.
When we turned the corner, we were greeted by multiple women in what I would guess were Kimono robes. They walked us down a central, dark-stained wooden walkway to a low-laid table. My first thought was, “I can’t sit on the ground for an entire meal. Hips. No. Good.”
Luckily, the seating was actually recessed in the floor. Tim appeared to be sharing similar concerns to me as he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw there was a place for our feet below the seat.
As with every meal in Japan, we were greeted with warm towels to wipe our hands. If you are a man, you can also wipe your face. I did.
Ai, who had reserved this dinner, explained that the meal we were about to have was Yakiniku, meaning, literally, grilled meat. Grilled meat we would have.
Before we got to eat the meat, Tim and I were each greeted by three of the kimono-clad servers who, ever-so-delicately, placed bibs around our necks. For this we said, “Arigato.”
Ai’s reaction to the three-person bib application:
Tim’s reaction:
Then came the meat.
There were small cuts of beef.
They became this:
There were large cuts of beef.
I don’t really know what that cut was, but the best Arnie and Ai could do to describe it was as a rib or back strip. Either way, it was the best piece of meat I have ever eaten. When it reached a certain point of cooking, the server would come to the table and use those large scissors leaning against the grill in the photo above to snip it into smaller pieces.
After a few rounds of seemingly standard beef cuts, Ai upped the ante by ordering some beef tongue.
While this wasn’t my favorite, it was worth trying. It was, for lack of better description, chewy.
I should mention that after each selection of meat was grilled and eaten, one of the servers would come to our table with a fresh grill top. There would be no tainting of one meat’s taste by the last. Luckily for me, the used, hot grill top was precariously lifted over Tim and Arnie’s heads each time.
After receiving our fourth fresh grill top, we were then thrown off our game by what appeared to be white meat.
False alarm, this wasn’t white meat. It was the cow’s “first stomach,” Ai had said.
It curled on the grill as it cooked, and was also chewy. Again, not my favorite, but you know what they say, “When in Tokyo…” Right?
We had some vegetables. Arnie said he hated cucumber with a passion, so he had none.
A surprisingly tasty treat was the fried garlic.
We finished off the meat session with some hot soup which, obviously, had beef in it. The broth reminded me, ever so slightly, of the double spice Ramen broth I had drunk on our first night out.
As was customary with every meal we had in Tokyo, we were also offered miso soup and hot green tea.
To compensate for having eaten a bowl full of fried garlic, we were each given a piece of gum.
Filled to the brim with red meat, we all stood from our sunken table and made our way to our shoes we had left in the foyer. With our shoes back on our feet, we stepped back into the rock garden that had first greeted us at the elevator where one of the servers offered to spray us with a glorified Febreeze. They really thought of everything.
I kindly obliged the offer to be rid of grilled meat, tongue and stomach scent, took my small Valentine’s care package they were offering, and I stepped into the elevator with my other no longer smelling of meat friends and headed back into the downtown Tokyo night life.
Karaoke?
