Dinner with a Fulbrighter

Our first night in Tokyo! Although I'm sure we're all tired, it's exciting! Former Fulbright scholars have volunteered to take groups of us out to a local restaurant (we each pay for ourselves, of course). We arrived at the appointed meeting room in the hotel and were assigned to a numbered table. Musicians were performing traditional Japanese music on the koto and the flute. There were about 5 people per table and we received a great map of the area around the hotel which showed the locations of many restaurants and internet cafes. "Our" Fulbrighter arrived--her name is Yuko Murekami and she got her PhD at Indiana University. She was a lot of fun and wanted to make sure that we were all having a good time.

Yuko took us to a restaurant not too far away and we had our first experience with removing our shoes before entering the room where we would be having dinner. The table was very low to the ground, but there was a "well" underneath for our legs.








Since we had no way of figuring out the menu, we asked Yuko to order a variety of things for us all to share.











Here is the menu of daily specials posted on the wall.




Yuko ordered a variety of appetizers for us, as well as sake and plum wine. I'm sure this is the first of many dinners that I will photograph! The sake sets are beautiful.



I had serious doubts when Yuko told us that she had ordered tomato jello. Tomato jello?? It sounds awful, but actually it was made of tomatoes and horseradish and even though it was in gelatin form, it was good. And the dish is so pretty!



The next dish was tofu. It was very soft and I have to admit that I didn't care for this one too much.


A Japanese omelet was next. It was very firm and was served cold. It almost had a sweet taste, kind of like corn pudding. That's shredded daikon radish beside the eggs.


Tempura vegetables followed the omelet. I don't know what some of the vegetables were, but they were delicious.


Continued in the next post...