David Plotz, from Japan. (4) - By David Plotz

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Entry 4

Posted Thursday, April 11, 2002, at 12:10 PM ET

David Plotz, Slate's Washington bureau chief, is currently on a Japan Society media fellowship in Tokyo.

Forgive me, because I'm rather drunk as I write this. I'm also delightfully full. I'm a lot poorer than I was three hours ago. And all the sea bream of the world hate me.

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Hanna's fishnetsHanna's birthday, like the Queen of England's, is being celebrated over several days. Yesterday was the actual day, but today is Hanna's Birthday Observed. Our neighbor Tamami, perhaps the kindest of the dozens of phenomenally kind people we have met here, offers to baby-sit Noa, so I persuade Hanna to splurge for a super bang-up meal at the most delicious, excessive, overwrought, Japan-of-the-boom-years-style restaurant we could find. Hanna slips on her new fishnets, and we hop a taxi to Shinjuku, Tokyo's Blade Runner neighborhood.

My translator Risako, after some research, had landed us a reservation at Shogatsuya Kitchou. This, she tells me, is the sister of one of Tokyo's most celebrated restaurants, a place you can't go unless you get a recommendation from another customer, and where if you do get in, you'd pay $800 for dinner. Shogatsuya Kitchou is the consumer-friendly outlet. (So consumer friendly that it is located on the top floor of a fancy department store. This does not have the tacky connotation it might in the United States. Here, it just means you are closer to potential diners.)

When we arrive at 8 p.m., a phalanx of bowing young women greet us and steer us into our private room. (One of the key differences between upscale American and Japanese dining: In America, the better the restaurant, the more customers insist on sitting where everyone can see them. In Japan, the better the restaurant, the more customers insist on sitting where everyone can't see them. This, I suppose, has something to do with Japan being a crowded, panopticon country in which the greatest luxury is private space to do whatever the hell you want.)

We are presented with the menu, which offers three choices: An incredibly expensive nine-course set menu, a ridiculously expensive nine-course set menu, and a ludicrously expensive nine-course set menu. We choose one ridiculous (15,000 yen) and one ludicrous (25,000). Our waitress brings us our first bottle of sake. When I later pour the last of it into my glass, a pair of tiny gold flowers floats down in the final drops. In good tequila, a worm. In good sake, gold flowers. (This turns out to be just the first gold of the night. My clam soup comes topped with a tiny gold bird—delicious.)

The food begins to arrive, and with it elaborate explanation. Our first course is six or seven exquisite little dishes. The giant lima bean is "horse bean," the waitress tells us. There is also a bamboo with spinach and tiny pine cones, some foie gras here, some salmon roe there. The "ludicrous" plate includes a mysterious orange slab. The waitress runs out and returns with a dictionary, then says, "This is dried egg of grey mullet. It is very expensive. Japanese love it. It tastes funny." It's crunchy and wonderful, though. (Each dish is served in gorgeous pottery bowls, garnished with vines and mysterious red flowers.)

Hanna and breamWhen she arrives with our second course, she brings a book that has pictures of every sea creature that's ever been et. She points to a tiger-striped, mean-looking fish, and then at Hanna's soup—"sea bream." Huge delicious tranches of sea bream then appear on the sashimi platter (along with the fattiest fatty tuna ever, and the butteriest squid. Who knew squid could be buttery?). The sashimi platter, incidentally, is accompanied by a garnish—three mounds of mashed potatoes, coated in kelly-green seaweed, surrounded by foamy slices of radish. We start to eat it, and the waitress tells us, no, no, they are supposed look like rocks covered with moss, in the rushing water—which is, in fact, what they do look like.

Only when she comes back with the fifth course do we start to wonder if there is some conspiracy against the sea bream, begin to wonder what sea bream ever did to make the chef hate them so. The meal has become a vendetta against the poor sea bream, a fish we had never heard of four courses ago. The waitress delivers a gelatinous square and says, "This is a consommé with lily bulb and sea bream." A minute later she returns with the dictionary and adds, "with ovary of sea bream." Ovary tastes, I am afraid to say, a bit like I imagine cat food does. (This is the only course that is not spectacularly yummy.)

Next course is tempura, exquisitely crispy—two shrimp and three perfect, golden-as-the-real-gold, golf-ball-sized spheres. "Sea bream," she says. "The opposite of ovaries." I say, slightly choking, "Testicles?" Hanna says "Gonads?" The waitress nods and smiles cheerfully. They are quite pleasant, a bit like tempura cottage cheese.

The sea bream gets a respite for a few minutes, and then our "main" dishes arrive (though how you can serve a main dish after eight appetizers, I don't understand). For the ridiculous menu, a silver tureen filled with … sea bream risotto. For the ludicrous, a copper vat of sea bream and sesame stew.

This is followed the traditional farewell cup of green tea, which is in this case the most vivid emerald imaginable. Hanna glances at it and says, "Bream tea?"

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