Beefing Up

Hello everyone from relatively cool Japan (mid twenties celcius)! There is a typhoon incoming to Japan that, while not directly headed for Tokyo, will apparently cause a significant deluge later tonight, which means the sky is cloudy and the temperature mercifully not above 30 - though this will return once the typhoon blows past.

This blog is largely going to be about cooking and devouring some incredibly delicious Japanese beef, but first, a little briefing on my academic goings on:

I have submitted all my university assignments for the semester, given numerous presentations, and exam season is going along well, then the two months of summer holiday will be here! I am looking forward to not having to get up at 5.40 every morning to go to university, and also for the (hopeful) move to the Odaiba dormitory, about which I will find out next week.

One thing I volunteered to do back in May, and actually did two Fridays ago, was take part in the international student speech presentation event at Kashiwa Campus. International students were invited to give a speech, 8-10 minutes long, in Japanese, about a topic of our choice. I chose New Zealand craft beer, and spent most of July trying to commit 50+ lines of Japanese to memory - quite a task! I had some excellent help from my assigned tutor, Yasui, and Claire also played a not insignificant part in helping me learn my lines. Anyways, the presentation event was good, reasonably well attended, with lots of questions (mine were mostly about alcohol taxation differences in NZ and Japan), with other presentations on life in Argentina, foodstuffs of Beijing, and the New Zealand Haka.

The presenters and tutors/teachers

My tutor, Yasui, and I

The main part of this blog though is about a dining experience I had with Claire last night. Claire had applied for a dining experience in a yakiniku (grilled meat) restaurant that had just recently opened a new branch, and wanted to get some more publicity among the foreigner market in Tokyo. As entries were for pairs, Claire very kindly included me, and boy was it good! It was run as a group dinner, with two lots of pairs sitting at tables with gas fired grills in the middle, and a pipe running from the ceiling functioning as an extractor fan.

The restaurant, called Hachi Hachi 88 does Kyushuu beef in a number of cuts and styles, and is a way of having the heavily marbled, Japanese beef experience, but in a more affordable way than say, Kobe beef. We had a ten course meal which started with beef tongue and went all through the cow, with some salads, kimchi and bibimbap in between.

Delicately prepared cow tongue

Pink peppered salad with citrus dressing

We were seated across from two Americans, Amon and Elizabeth, and we made our way through some truly delectable meats. The intensity of the heat plus the delicacy of the slices means you only need to cook them for ten seconds per side for the most part, and being still rare in the middle they are highly melt-in-the-mouth! One of the cuts was described as creamy, and I was surprised by how almost buttery the texture was, though my absolute favourite was meat from the rump, which had been scored in a cross hatch pattern - it had this incredible 'mouth feel'.

One platter of different cuts of meat - notice the 'rose' in the middle

Meat + grill; does not get any simpler!

Look at that glorious meat rose being unraveled

Japanese like heavily marbled beef, and one of the cuts, from the spare ribs, in particular was exactly this, and you could almost break it with your tongue, such was its softness.

Beyond the taste, the cooking experience itself was quite fun (for some reason cooking your own food in a restaurant, rather than at home, is often a fun thing, despite the fact you go to a restaurant to do exactly the opposite - juxtapositions are strange sometimes...), and the marbling on the meat meant there was opportunity for a bit of a fire show as well! Also testament to the extractor fan, it was an entirely smokeless affair, with no meaty/oily smells permeating our clothes (thank heavens!)

Claire getting her grill on

FIRE

Grilled to perfection

We also had some cuts of pork, cut super thickly, and for this we were provided with a monstrous pair of meat scissors, which had a great feeling when in use - very satisfying (though it didn't do to imagine what else it could cut through if one wasn't careful!). The resultant cut pork sizzled nicely on the grill, and made a nice change from the beef flavours we were having.

Bringing home the bacon, so to speak

Claire did a fantastic job as Grillmaster-in-Chief, but it wouldn't do for me to leave it entirely to her without giving it a go myself:

Literally 10 seconds each side is all that was needed

And just for some gratuitous grilling photos:

The last big course was a Korean dish which was set into a super hot stone bowl. A mix of rice, cheese, vegetables, sauce and spicy fish roe, it gets mixed up into a glorious mess, but with the parts that contact the bowl being a crispy delicious crust.

Super tasty, and a mix of a whole lot of flavours, it is highly recommended!

Finally we had a silken silken soy pudding with a sugar syrup on top, which was very tasty indeed. The small sweet treat at the end of 9 very impressive savoury courses was the perfect flourish with which to finish things off, and Claire and I were two very happy campers!

As a decor note, the name of the restaurant, Hachi Hachi 88 features heavily. Hachi is Japanese for 8 , and so the wallpaper reflects this quite well!

The place itself is very crisp looking; while they market themselves as an affordable dining option, it is definitely presented as a reasonably upmarket destination (though not so high ball as to be intimidating). That it is a place where you grill your own food also lowers this intimidation factor. All in all, it was a great experience, (not just because I was in excellent company, AND because it was free), and it is definitely something I would recommend trying out. The manager speaks very good English, and the staff were all very helpful - there were a few mistakes made in terms of getting things to the right table, and at times the timing of various components was slightly disjointed (fortunately I had not eaten the meat that was to be wrapped in some other bits and pieces yet). However I think the manager in particular was very nervous as having such discerning (ha!) and foreign (scary) clients dining in his restaurant, which reflected on the service a tad. However all in all it was very well presented, and we were in no position to complain (not that we were going to at any rate!)

So if you find yourself in Tokyo, and specifically Akasaka, you should make your way to Hachi Hachi 88, and look for this sign - you will not regret it (unless you are vegetarian/vegan of course!)

Up the stairs to the right and a glorious dining experience awaits!

As I've been writing this in between lessons, the stormy weather that acts as the harbinger of the typhoon has set in, so I have rain slamming into the window behind me; I am well glad I brought my umbrella - though how well it will fare if the wind picks up is anyone's guess!

Rightio readers, that's all for now; now it's essentially holidays for me you can expect some more material to appear shortly - so keep your eyes peeled and there'll be another blog post up in no time!

Stay frosty out there,

Troy :)