28 August 2010
Posted by Jay

Saturday night was the first night Jess and I went out on the town without the kids.  We found a sitter through our church who was quite reasonable by Tokyo standards.  There are numerous sitter services within the city, but the costs for them are astronomical.

One of Jess's co-workers suggested a yakitori place that they really enjoyed going to.  He even made a reservation for us and drew us a map to get there!

We left the girls with the sitter and headed out to dinner.  We found it without much issue and found that he reserved a table in their traditional dining area.  We removed our shoes when we walked in the door and sat on the tatami mats at the low tables.  Before we go on, we are really not meant to sit on the floor.  The endless battle was finding a comfortable way to sit during our meal, but this was the only negative of the evening.

So what is yakitori?  It is a style of cooking using skewers over charcoal.  We were given a "must try" list by Jess's co-workers and they did not steer us wrong.  They had a english menu which layed out the different meats and veggies that you could get and also side dishes.

We started out with a couple glasses of Kirin beer and cucumber with japanese miso.  So the must haves were as follows:
chicken meatball
cheese, pepper and bacon-my favorite
tomato bacon
Shitake
Garlic chicken
Hokkaido potato-an awesome baked potato
We also got the bacon-wrapped asparagus-Jess's favorite.

Everything was amazing, and we would definitely go back.

After dinner we took a cab to the Ginza neighborhood.  This is one of the popular upscale shopping districts in Tokyo.  Luckily all the stores were closed due to the hour (well lucky for me)!

charcoal grilled yakitori kushiwaka, dinner on the third floor

Don't let the smile fool you, my feet were totally asleep

Jess showing off the bacon wrapped asparagus and her mad chopstick skillz

Ginza

Ginza

Yamaha store on Ginza

Kanpai!

Jay