I went to visit my old friends at the Amazon.co.jp headquarters in Shibuya yesterday. It was a very unique and special experience to finally get to meet some of the people i have worked with for so long in their 'natural habitat', and it felt a lot like coming home in some way, due to the fact that Amazon really is Amazon all over the world -- same type of office set up etc. and due to the fact that I was welcomed so warmly by everyone there.
After the grand Amazon tour Makoto, Takashi & Ted took me out to dinner at a tiny Japanese restaurant close by that specializes in Japanese delicacies of all sorts. I don't know that i can re-create the complete list of foods we tried and or their names (neither in English nor in Japanese) but it was amazing and certainly the culinary highlight of my Tokyo stay so far. Let's see, here is what i recall:
"Sky-beans" - large green beans cooked in salty water -- not western style beans, but about 2/3 of an inch squarish beans that had to be picked out of the shell to be eaten.
"Mountain-vegetable" -- i've determined later that this must have been a type of Fern salad.
Pickled vegetable salad
Kazuo (a fish) sashimi with ginger & soy
Horse sashimi with ginger, garlic & soy
"A type of Eel" sashimi
"Some dried, salted fish" grilled
Cold udon noodles with Soy(?) sauce (-- practiced Japanese style noodle slurping and failed miserably)
Blowfish (fugu) -- and yes I am am obviously still alive :) [-- I did have Takeshi take the first bite... just to be on the safe side]
Green-tea salmon soup (-- practiced Japanese style soup eating and failed miserably)
Ume boshi - pickled, salty plum in rice & seaweed
Baked egg with 'special sauce'
and probably a few more things which i may have forgotten, due to the smooth and tasty Sake that came with the meal...
All in all, truly a very special and emotional evening.
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