One of the first things Marthese booked on our trip was a cooking class in Tokyo. Shame she forgot all about it.
We decided against a day trip out of town this morning, and we were getting ready to head out to explore Tokyo when Marthese suddenly noticed a circle on her map – the cooking class! Thankfully we realised we had over an hour to get there (our calendar entry was on Sydney time, an hour earlier) so we grabbed our coffees, walked through Roppongi and made it to the Akasaka Teran just on time.
Just as well, the cooking course was a treat. Traditional “Shokin Ryori” style, which is a very very old vegetarian Buddhist cuisine. Our teacher, Masami, showed us how to make Asparagus and Snow Peas with Sesame Dressing (definitely the highlight) and Parched Tofu and Vegetables. We used some ingredients neither of us were familiar with, and I cooked up tofu for the first time.
We then took our meals, along with some edamame-style beans and miso soup Masami had prepared, and ate them in the small temple beside the kitchen. Masami’s husband owned the temple, and apparently it gets quite busy on weekends. The food was delicious, and while Masami’s English was quite broken, she made extensive efforts to stay engaged with us and was an absolutely outstanding host.
Following our veggie feast we walked around Roppongi, the white-touristy end of town, and headed up to the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower to catch an awesome view of the city and the Star Wars Visions exhibition. Lucky me 🙂 The exhibition featured lots of new artwork inspired by the Star Wars series done in dozens of different styles, lots of scale replicas of ships and locations from Star Wars, and some amazing props and costumes from the films, including most of the original main cast costumes, lightsabers, and blasters. SO COOL. Sadly, pictures were not allowed in the exhibition.
To cross another burger off my list, and to counteract the health benefits of my long morning walk and nutritious vegetarian lunch, I smashed a Wendy’s burger while Marthese shopped at Zara. Neither are particularly Japanese things, but they seem to do it better here 🙂
Elias Rambles 