I'm staying with Mihoko, who has been very gracious, but I also know Emiko and Makoto Takahashi (Emiko-san and Takahashi-san) here in Tokyo. I got together with them yesterday and they took me all over Tokyo, including to the Shinto shrine I told you about (FYI: it is always Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple. The reverse is like saying Christian synagogue or Jewish church) and to a museum that depicted over 400 years of Tokyo history, back to when it was known as Edo. The absolute pinnacle of the day, though, was when they took me (and Mihoko too) to a restaurant on the extreme outskirts of Tokyo, in the mountains where one of the rivers starts. I adored this restaurant. It was incredible, like something out of a movie. I don't think I would ever have found it or been able to order if I wasn't with native Japanese speakers, so it was a special privilege.

Remember how I told you that the restaurant we went to before was screened off and that seemed unusual for me? Well I see now what Mihoko was saying - that was very ordinary compared to Ukai Toriyama. To truly provide the privacy the Japanese enjoy, you don't need only your own screened in area at the restaurant, you need your own HOUSE!

The restaurant is set in this narrow valley that climbs up the mountain side. Most everyone arrives on a shuttle bus from the train station at the base of the valley. You climb a windy narrow mountain road beside a small river and disembark at the entrance to the restaurant. The river is now to your left, and you walk past the torches and up the stone steps past a waterwheel and into the waiting area. I assumed the restaurant was located to the right and behind, connected to the waiting area. Boy was I wrong.

When it was our turn the hostess led us out towards the river again, then along stone paths and over small bridges through a fantastic Japanese garden (of course) past koi ponds and babbling brooks. We passed several other structures before we came to ours. We removed our shoes at the entrance and stepped onto the tatami mats which were affixed to the floor.

Our house had only two rooms, and our room had a square table for four sunken into a square hole. Each room has only one table and they decide which room to give you based on the size of your party. We all settled into the chair backs with pillows on put our legs under the table and on to the heated floor of the square opening. This was after a little confusion about where everyone should sit.

I've learned now that you don't sit down in Japan until you are told where to sit, because there is always a meaning and an order to the seats and each is meant for a specific person in the group. In this case one seat was the closest to the alcove with the traditional scroll so it had the highest status, but it was also the closest to the door which gave it the lowest status. Our room was confusing. Emiko-san decided it was still a good seat and that as the guest I should sit in it. I thought maybe Takahashi-san would sit in it as the host and the man, but Emiko-san insisted and so we arranged ourselves that way. I had a great view of the garden and the side of other buildings, though I noticed I couldn't see into anyone else's window. We had our own world in the trees, with the mountain and the brook and the koi drifting by under our window.

The food was excellent, starting with some very fine smooth silky soft tofu in sesame sauce. Tofu here is much softer than the stuff we get in America. Try eating this kind of tofu with chopsticks - it is hard! When I first came to Japan I would keep cutting through the tofu rather than picking it up. Now I am better. The waitress, according to my hosts, even commented not once but TWICE that I was very good at using chopsticks, and that I held them correctly (controlling the top one with the middle finger) which is something not all Japanese people even do right, much as some Americans grip their fork all wrong. It made me feel so good! And Mihoko's mom said later that my Japanese is improving and she can understand me better. Give me a couple years and I could get good at this!

But back to the restaurant - The main dish was kinda dramatic. Well, fun, anyway and unusual for me. In the center of the table was a square space about 4 inches deep lined with fine sand that was raked into parrallel lines. Facing each person was a curve of brown pottery that formed a wall about 5 inches high and 8 inches wide. The reason for these bacame clear when the waiter brought in a metal basket full of natural wood charcoal that was already hot. He set it on the sand in the center of the four heat shields and put a grill over it. The waitress soon appeared with a platter of raw skitake mushrooms, large sections of big white green onion pieces and organic spring chicken, all on flat disposable bamboo skewers. We grilled all these according to her instructions and dipped them into the terriyaki sauce provided part way through the process. It was so good!

The dishes just kept coming and coming. We had two bowls of soup (one a spring soup and one a miso), rice with mountain potato sauce, salted baked whole young fish (each person had their own entire small fish, head and all), cucumber pickles, and all sorts of good things. For dessert we had a yummy dish that was like an italian ice with a sauce that was derived from the local mountain grape. So good!

All this time the waitress would slide open the door periodically and bring the next course. She sould set the platter on the floor (so my waist level or so as I sat) kneel down and explain the course or ask how much each of us wanted, all while saying gozaimas a lot, which is the polite way of speaking. Each course and each dish within the course had its own little plate or bowl or little tray, so nothing touched and I might have 5 or 6 trays at once. Excellent.

Yeah, so I loved it. Bedtime now. Tomorrow is my last full day here, so I am probably going to go to a hot spring. Then I leave for Australia, so I will not have access to Mihoko's internet connection anymore :-( It has been so nice to be able to use it whenever I want (Thank you Mihoko!) so I don't know if I will be able to post as much in Australia. We'll see. I'll write a bit more from Japan before I go. Oyuasumi!