Getting Fried in Tokyo
By JORDAN IKEDA
RAFU STAFF WRITER
Friday, April 11, 2008

Staff writer Jordan Ikeda revisits Tokyo several years later and discovers that the food hasn’t changed at all.

Photos by Jordan Ikeda and Nao Gunji
The depa chika is the perfect launch pad for any food enthusiast, offering a wide array of food from katsu of all kinds (above) to fresh seafood to mochi to extremely expensive teas. It’s got something for everyone.

The Colonel treated me well in Japan.
All I could do was show my gratitude.

Above, the bakery section of the depa chika is busy as usual. Home to cakes and cookies
and sweets of all kinds.

The stamp on my passport looked exactly the same. So did the little ticket stapled inside, yet my second trip was a much different experience.

Four years ago, I was a newly turned 21-year-old halfway through my bachelor’s degree who had never set foot outside the country. Back then, still living at home, not paying for rent, I was convinced I would one day be a novelist.

Two weeks ago, now 25, I flew to Tokyo, a happily married rent-payer, a thesis-shy of my master’s degree, the novelty of novel-writing having led me back to the reality of journalism.
Four years ago, it was my first pressjunket (something a real journalist might frown on, but an intern gets giddy about). I was given the royal treatment, set up at the Oakwood Residence in Azabu Juban, a whole apartment to myself. Master bedroom, living room, two televisions, kitchen, workspace, and two bathrooms, one with a traditional
Japanese bathtub as well as a separate shower.

This time? My hotel room was barely bigger than my walk-in closet. The television might’ve been 19 inches. The bathroom? I had to turn off the sink to start the shower. From the toilet, I could easily touch both walls with my elbows.

On my first visit, everything was paid for. Free airfare on Singapore Airlines.
Once in Tokyo I was given a week’s pass for the subway. Free train rides. The second trip, it cost me $800 on American Airlines, and once in Tokyo, I kept every 100-yen coin I could for train tickets.

Like the first go round, everybody still spoke to me in Japanese, only this time, I had picked up a few phrases.

“Chotto Matte, chotto matte,” was my favorite. But the most useful was defi nitely, “Gomennasai. Nihongo dame desu.”

Four years ago, I visited the Emperor’s palace, took a boat tour down the river, saw the city from Tokyo Tower, reenacted Bill Murray’s scene in “Lost In Translation” at the Park Hyatt and during the second half of that trip, I stayed with my Uncle and cousins who took me to Roppongi’s clubs and bars, to Ginza with all the designer shops and to Akihabara’s electronic wonderland.

Two weeks ago, I ventured outside of Tokyo to the coastal town of Kamakura’s Hachiman Shrine where I saw a traditional wedding take place, where people purified themselves by drinking water from an okiyome well before trekking up to the temple. Inside the many visitors threw coins in the osaisen box with hopes of sustaining or rekindling good fortune.

The first time I saw Tokyo, all the bright burning, colorful lights that compelled me to describe it as the “city on acid.” The second time, outside the city, I saw the endless stream of houses bunched together, a myriad of colorful clothes draped on balconies and wires drying in the sun.

Two excursions, so many differences, both subtle and palpable. From glitzy to common. From earthly to spiritual. And yet, the one constant that I took away from both trips, the one thing that sremained steady and true and sure…

The food.

Japan has wonderful food. I mean, even places like Kentucky Fried Chicken, where in America patrons go to fill their arteries with grease. In Japan, the service and quality is simply a notch above. KFC Japan, by the way, has this special chicken that has pepper and sesame seeds and a slightly sweet sauce. It’s quite good and a unique twist on the Colonel’s recipe. A definite must for all KFC America patrons.

But I digress. My first time in Japan, I indulged in cuisine that I would normally not be able to afford. I was treated to a traditional kaiseki at the top of Park Hyatt for example.

This last time, however, I ate more like a resident. And yet the food did not disappoint. I mean, 7-11 advertises onigiri on television. They’ve got 20 different kinds, and they all taste like they were freshly made at home.

I’m a sucker for fried food, as evidenced by my KFC deviation above, and my all-time favorite dish has always been chicken katsu. The bastardized half-brother of the more commonly eaten tonkatsu, it was the one thing I had to have. The one thing, oddly enough, that I didn’t get my fi rst time in Japan.

I started my second trip with some chicken karage at a national family restaurant called Skylark, where my wife used to waitress. She likens it to Denny’s as far as commonality, but unlike Denny’s it was delicious and inexpensive—the perfect combination.

Later on my trip, I got my katsu wish at a restaurant in Shinjuku called Ohtoya. The restaurant has a nice view overlooking Shinjuku and the prices are very reasonable as well.

When the waitress brought me my chicken katsu, I kid you not, I was shaking in anticipatory delight. It was, quite honesly, beautiful.

Now, I have been spoiled in the chicken katsu department my whole life. My mom makes great katsu and she taught my sister who has carried on that torch quite nicely. My grandma also makes a mean, mean dish. It’s always been hard for me to choose which of the three is my favorite. Well, now there is a fourth battling it out for number one in my book.

The chicken at Ohtoya was moist, the crust flaky and crisp. It was everything
I wanted it to be, just like my mom’s, sister’s and grandma’s.

As I traveled around the various train stations, a phenomenon that amazed me was the department store grocery markets or depa chika that are literally elegant smorgasborgs of food. Imagine Nordstrom selling katsu shrimp and pork, chicken karage, cakes, salads of all kinds, tempura, tea, and ice cream from their glass cases—like the ones in the perfume department.

At the Shinjuku station depa chika, I had some chicken karage. And despite not being hot, taste-wise, it outshined any karage I’ve had stateside. Period. Exclamation point!

For dessert, I visited this place in Shinjuku called Takano Fruit Parlor. It’s a bit upscale, and you might have to watch Hilary Duff and Cameron Diaz advertise in Japanese on the huge screen hanging from the opposite building outside, but the desserts are simply wonderful. I tried some of my wife’s chocolate ice cream, chocolate mousse, with cream and chunks of chocolate dish while I had some sort of berry mix with gelatin, sorbet and cream. The restaurant itself is “Pinkberry”-esque (meaning, trying to be young and hip), but the desserts are for everyone.

The pinnacle of the trip was when my brother and mother-in-law took me to a
kushiage, all-you-can-eat, do-it-yourself restaurant. At this heaven-on-earth where each table has its own fryer as its centerpiece, I was set up with my own plate of panko and fl our, then given the green light to choose as many shrimp, chicken, beef, vegetable, potoato skewers as my heart desired.

Let me tell you, there’s nothing like the popping, fizzling, crackling sound of panko-encrusted shrimp cooking right before your eyes.

I think I was able to polish off 50 skewers. The record, as I found out later, is something like 200. Yeah, 200, by a 10-year-old boy too.

It seemed I was eating from the second I stepped off the plane. Soba, senbei, a whole variety of juices and teas and sodas, rice balls, candy and of course fried food. It was definitely a personal exploration, a journey, into the fried life.

So, who knows where I’ll be working, how old, what new challenges I’ll be facing on my next trip to Japan. It could be in a few months, or it could be twenty years from now. I mean, customs might even change their passport stamps. Heck, I might not even need a passport. That much is uncertain.

But the one thing I know I can count on if and when I go again, the thing that won’t change, the thing that will have me yearning to go back…

You guessed it.

My stomach says “arigato.”