We put on our “yukata” (traditional cotton robe – wrap right over left – if reverse, means you are dead – and after sipping green tea, served by the agile constantly kneeling waka-okami (young women staff) and prepared for
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Caroline dines |
another many course meal – 13 courses, in fact. The bad news we have to get onto the floor to enjoy it. (They don’t have the drop down areas under the tables as in USA sushi restaurants where your legs can hang. No. It was pure torture to fold up like a pretzel and try to pretend you liked the position you were in.) But each course of our dinner was a show piece – always some interpretation of fish and vegetable as if an art form, and it tasted splendid. Each course was served separately by the attentive women, and each moment, as you got fuller and fuller, you wondered if you could hold on to the end. After having experienced every kind of water creature, some known, some unknown, there comes the proverbial bowl of miso soup and a bowl of perfect rice accompanied by various pickles (no, not like our gherkins). I was about to keel over with exhaustion of just being uncomfortable on the hard floor, wondered if I would ever get up again, and certainly had hoped I didn’t have to kneel back down again. Dessert was a small helping
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This is sashimi at its best |
(everything is a small helping or bite) of fruit – one of which was green melon better than any I’ve ever tasted. James and I looked at each other as it dawned on us, as we turned the piece over to look at the rhine, this was a thin slice of the beautiful melons we had seen priced at $220 a piece. Now that was a kick!