For the past few months I have been going to the gym every Saturday morning which allows me to explore parts of Tokyo that I never took the time to explore especially on a Saturday morning and into the lunch time. Three weeks ago, I decided to walk around Kanda Awajicho (a NY Times article on the neighborhood – slightly dated but mostly still true) and found little shops with interesting and modern Japanese things. For lunch I stopped by a restaurant, an old establishment, offering monkfish dishes which was quite an experience.
A blog by Ayako Mathies 
Gym通い…偉い！
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Hai. ^^
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That last picture with the dice-like cube… is that a container for tea? looks really cute!
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I’m keeping salt in it. Too tiny for tea leaves. Wouldn’t hold a lot.
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How was the monkfish prepared?
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Yanagawa style.
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I love monkfish. When my wife and I married, we didn’t have much money and we cooked the food for our wedding reception, including futomaki and a monkfish bourride. In the US it’s sometime billed as “the poor man’s lobster,” which it certainly is not, but still delicious. Could you explain what the small wooden plaques bound with twine are used for? Thank you. Ken
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I didn’t know you ate monkfish in the US. And that’s interesting that you made futomaki for your wedding?! My grandmother (or more precisely her daughters including my mother) used to make futomaki for new year holidays (similar in importance to your Thanksgiving and Christmas) and I used to think that that was what everyone did but it was apparently just my mother’s family.
The wooden plaques are for checking in your shoes. The restaurant (opened in 1830) is in a Japanese house and you take your shoes off before you enter. Can you see how the numbers on the two sets of plaques correspond (33, 50 & 70)? The stringed ones I think were hung on the shoe boxes which lined the wall on the other side and the customers were given the plain ones. A guy sits on the green cushion and hands out the plaques and puts your shoes away.
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