On Wednesday night, we headed into Tokyo near Waseda to meet up with
Jin’s brother Ken, who lived near there. The plan was to find a good,
local sushi joint and have a nice dinner. Well, wow, did we ever find
one. The place is called Ohzushi (translated, Big Sushi), or 大寿司,
owned and operated by Mr. 深谷大三郎, or Daisaburo Fukaya. This was an
experience. To start, we got a ton of amazing sushi, most of which I’d
never heard of. A couple of my favorites were kotsu - at least that’s
what I think it is. Mr. Fukaya kept pronouncing it “kotz” — it’s a
white fish, really yummy, and apparently seasonal for May. Wasn’t able
to find it anywhere else. We also had some kujira…. we at first
thought it was tuna, as it looked a lot like ahi — very red and lean.
Oops, not quite right on the translation — it’s minke whale! Hmmm…
not sure how I feel about that, but it was really yummy.
We also sampled a number of sakes… apparently, you have room
temperature sake, warm sake, and cold sake. All that stuff you learned
about sake being served at 98° F is just for export, apparently. And the
cold stuff was amazing… we had one which I can’t quite remember that
apparently has a 5-month waiting period to get. Wow was it smooth. We
did get some brand recommendations for others which hopefully we can
find at Uwajimaya back in Seattle, or perhaps just order online. I’ll
update this post later when I find the card I wrote them down on.
We also discovered that for sushi, there are a couple different soy
sauces, and they aren’t called soy sauces, as they’re just for sushi.
You get sweeter ones and drier ones for red fish or white fish. You also
don’t typically put wasabi in the soy sauce… there should be wasabi
between the fish and the rice. Finally, we discovered the proper way to
eat sushi. You don’t just grab the sushi with your chopsticks on either
side of the rice, and dip the rice into the sauce. Instead, you turn the
sushi on its side, and hold the sushi with one chopstick on top of the
fish and another on the bottom of the rice. You then invert the sushi
and dip the fish in the sauce — this way, you get the right taste of
sauce on fish, and you don’t get soy-coated rice all in your soy sauce
dish. Huh…. I gotta try that in Seattle.
Anyway, for your dining pleasure if you’re ever in the Tokyo area:
Address: Ale Plaza B1, 1-1-5 Toyama, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan, 162-0052.
Directions: Go to the Wakamatsu Kawada station on the Oedo Line. Take
the only exit from the station. Make a right, then another right at the
corner by the Tully’s (yes, apparently like Starbucks Tully’s are now
everywhere in Tokyo). Go down the alley all the way, make a right on the
main road. Ohzushi will be on the left, in the basement of a building.