This sounded amazing, but wasn't. However, it wasn't bad either.

Little bites of high quality beef jerky. It was very clean-tasting, and not very greasy.

Weird combination, but delicous when grilled, which is how I usually have them.

These were my favorite chips while I was in Japan. I think the '3' indicates 3x the seaweed flavor.

A really light, low-fat snack.

Their sandwiches are perfect little morsels that help sustain you through your day. The bread is dense but soft. The eggs are perfectly cooked. I can eat a dozen of these.

Look at those perfectly cooked egg yolks.

Simple. Delicious.

Just $4 US for this ramen!

Ingenious packaging. The collagen-rich soup naturally congeals so that the fresh noodles can sit right on top without mixing until it is microwaved.

Pretty legit.

As good as my mom's best bao. The 'Premium' does taste better than the regular baos. I'm not sure why.

Gravy-like thickness. Slightly smokey, fishy. Extremely salty. Really good.

The noodles are thick and very firm. I usually don't like eggs wih my ramen, but this was very well seasoned.

I got this to try it, but I preferred it without.

Take the cold noodles and dip it into the thick broth. Slurp. Repeat.

When you're done with the tsukemen, they pour a light, unseasoned stock into your sauce to thin it out, along with a dusting of yuzu powder.

Banner stamped with the Rokurinsha logo

This guy is a bad ass.

The blown crystal is for cold sake, and the miniature chalice, for hot.

Chef Toshio was breaking down, cleaning, and mise en placing this dish all night.

Ami ebi.

Salt-fermented baby squid.

Chef preparing the squid.

The squid was minced and cooked in blazing hot earthen-ware table side...

...and served with rice.

Their vast selection of crockery. Rarely would everyone in our party have identical plates for the same course.

Old school steamer.

Sashimi Chef.

Look at this shell! It's so prehistoric-looking.

The oyster was served with a traditional tentsuyu sauce. The meat was very light, creamy, and tasted very clean. The longan berry was also a nice touch.

A great set. This was the creamiest ami ebi I've ever had. The sweet taste lingered subtlely until the next course.

Don't remember what this was! I know it was dressed in fresh yuzu and soy and that it was delicious, though.

Purportedly, from the Edo period.

Gently steamed epoch prawns served with a miso 'bisque' made from the heads.

Epoch prawns are incredible firm shrimp, and have a great snap to them. They are also intensely red when cooked.

A very simple dish; veyr soft, and delicate in flavor and texture. The baby mountain yams were something I've never had. They tasted like potatoes, but not as starchy, and--for lack of a better word, slimier, in a good way.

Before the reveal.

Check out this cool misshapen gold saucer they used to cook our fish.

Red snapper.

The red snapper was cooked in a broth made from its bones.

This was really good. It was still raw in the middle, only barely being cooked on the outside. I really cool sensation of hot and cold.

This was AMAZING. A nuclear explosion of crunch and crisp.

Ending the red snapper course was the broth the chefs cooked the red snapper in. Nothing is wasted here. The bones go into the cooking broth; the flesh served as sashimi; the skin transformed into edible chips; and the cooking broth reintroduced as a consomme.

Some really important people came in and got a bunch of cool stuff we didn't. This was just one of them.

This tasted like a Chinese stir-fry elevated way beyond recognition. The meat was expectedly buttery, but what was surprising to us was how buttery the eggplant was. It was dense, but extremely tender. I wish I knew what the garnish was because it was gorgeous, and tasted like okra.

The chefs brought this to our table and explained how this eggplant is unique to Kyoto.

They ended the hot course with their namesake : tempura. It was good, of course. The pike conger has tiny, delicate bones inseparable from the flesh. It took me by surprise, but I learned to enjoy its crunchy texture.

Mariko, the hostess, insisted that we drank sake with our tempura, and gifted us with complimentary unfiltered sake.

Unagi tempura.

This is my new favorite vegetable tempura. It's crunchy, dense, but it's not heavy, even when fried.

Udon noodles hand-made with Japanese mugwort and served with quail egg, kaeshi, wasabi, and grated mountain yam. This was a sexy dish, and the most memorable. The noodles were so pleasantly elastic and chewy.

Served hot alongside the udon for a contrast of temperatures.

When we finished our noodles, Chef Toshio asked for my camera. I didn't know why. At this point, he could have tempura'd my camera, and I would have eaten it. Instead, he asked us to raise our giant blocks of ice, cheers each other, and drink the cold soup straight from the bowl. So cool.

This was a perfect ending to the meal. Super simple. All you tasted was pure buckwheat in every bite. And it wasn't too sweet. It just topped off the meal in a very nice way.

Toshio, and his sister, Mariko, easily gave us the best customer service experience we've ever had, anywhere in Japan. That's saying something. I really hope to keep in touch with them, and I can't wait to return to this hidden gem.

Special guest Yoshimi!

Fresh cabbage and fermented chili & bean paste. Super refreshing.

beef tongue - tokyo white scallion

Really clean, and delicately creamy liver. Called white liver because it stays very bright pink when cooked as opposed to that metal grey that's usually associated with liver.

First stomach beef marinated in miso.

Yoshimi said this was a prized delicacy. I think it's parrt of the stomach. It's very soft, and fatty. You kind of need to be adventurous to love this, but after trying it several times, I had gotten used to it.

Cooked white liver.

Cooking the 'horumon'.

Fresh homemade tofu and fresh yuba.

This yuba is served cold, in the soy 'whey' in which the yuba was derived. Back home, the yuba I'm familiar with is this plasticky sheet of tofu used in mostly vegetarian dishes. This was an education on what yuba is supposed to be--silky, soft, and subtle.

Sushi restaurant very inconveniently located at the very top floor of Kyoto station. Worth the walk up as this was the best sushi we had in Japan. Again, I wish I took a moment to catch the name of this gem, but we stumbled upon it in a hungry stupor.

We made small talk with a fellow patron sitting next to us. He told us we had to try the chutoro here--so he bought each of us a portion to taste--another example of the unparalleled hospitality we were greeted with virtually everywhere in Japan. The chutoro, unctously delicious, of course.

The purported home of tsukemen.

Aside from pioneering tsukemen-style dipping ramen, Chef Kazuo Yamigishi is also known for his eclectic towel head band.

A thick, salty broth, rich in seafood flavor, but not at all fishy. Highly recommended.

This was the broth originally served at Taishoken. It's much thinner than what most of us recognize as tsukemen broth, but I also think this is why they might not be getting the greatest reviews. The thinner broth just isn't as flavorful.

Japan 〒542-0073 Osaka Prefecture, Osaka, Chuo Ward, Nipponbashi, 1 Chome−4−16 オーガストビル 1F +81 6-6212-0800

steamed geoduck & scallops - kobe beef tataki - fried cheese, tomato & bresola This enitre amuse set was amazing. We were surprised to even get this with the price we'd paid.

Fat from the kobe was used to grease the pan.

Whoa. That marbling.

The first two pieces of beef were browned off to create a fond to use as a base for the rest of the dish.

The sauce was just a raw egg yolk--nothing else. This spoke of the incredible quality and taste of both the beef and the egg. They needed little more than each other to shine.

DAMN.

The pomegranate seeds for the greyhound was pressed using this machine.

With vodka.

A clean blueberry taste. Not artificial at all.

This was the best grey hound I have ever had. The salt was a nice touch.

Very muscat grapey. For paced sipping.

Muscat grape liquor

Our bartender.

Tokyo, Shibuya. Walked in here on a whim. Great call.

fried eggplant - shishito peppers - tomatoes - cheese - poached egg - tonkatsu - pickles

Cute ass chair.

Tonkatsu shop in Tokyo.

The favorite.

Still good, but a little dry, and tough.

This bowl contained the most perfectly cooked rice ever.

The medium-rare cooked parts are the best.

The best gyoza we had.

Cooked in a cast-iron pan, and then flipped over as enitre disc. There was a hint of five spice in the filling. Very good.

Cannibalistic horse poster. Totally sold us.

Wish I remembered the name of this place. The chefs were really friendly, and held a conversation with us all night.

This--was amazing. Holy crap. They served it with slices of straight-up horse fat. So good. Try this.

This was stupid good. There was something so much cleaner, and crispier about this chicken skin than others that I've tried.

These takoyaki were made with mochi, which is different from traditional takoyaki. The result is a super gooey, cheesey octopus ball.

Don't remember the name of these either...but out of all the takoyaki places we tried in Japan, this was our favorite.