A Food Inspired Morning: Japanese Style Breakfast and Nishiki Market

This morning we shared a Japanese Style breakfast ordered as room service, which was brought up to a us by a very polite young man with excellent English. He arranged everything for us on our table and explained that the miso soup needed to be stirred first before pouring, and the tea kettle needed hot water added for green tea. The breakfast was delicious and beautifully presented, consisting of a big dish of sticky rice, sashimi, various pickles, tamago, broiled salmon, tiny litle dried fish in a bowl, scallions, soft tofu in ginger broth, boiled and glazed fish cake, along with the miso shiru, green tea and dried nori sheets. The serving size of each thing was small, so even though it sounds like a lot of food, it was actually a very normal sized breakfast to share. We ate while wearing our Yukatas (Japanese robes) and Connor even got in on the action, trying a little bit of everything. The only thing that remained untouched was the natto - I had a prior experience with it and knew enough to stay far, far away. My boys decided to follow suit, I think because they know there is barely anything on the planet that I won't eat. I loved this breakfast and wish I could eat this way every day:

After breakfast, showers and a trip downstairs to check out the underground shops and get information, it was time for Connor's nap. Perfect timing, so that while he slept we could get organized and figure out exactly what we were going to do for the day. Our first excursion was two subway stops north to Nishiki Market, a narrow, covered market filled with vendors and display after display of amazing Japanese food. We wandered through in disbelief at the dazzling array of food art laid out before us - gyoza in all shapes and sizes, colorful piles of produce, whole bbq eel, huge vats of fermenting vegetables, beautiful and intricate bento boxes, artistic displays of whole fish on ice, detailed glazed rice desserts and so much more. It was an amazing sight:

I think my personal favorite was glazed octopus lollipops:

Next we stopped into Aritsugu, a small local store that supplies artisan-made knives and kitchen tools, and has been in this business for 18 generations - wow! The company was founded by Aritsugu Fujiwara, expert sword maker to the Imperial family, in 1560 when he branched out to kitchen knives and wood chisels for Buddhist sculptures. With the arrival of the Meiji period (1868-1912), the company expanded to quality steel and copper cooking pots and specialized tools for the Japanese kitchen. The largest knives in the store had impressive 30 inch blades, and all were beautiful to look at. Some of the other kitchen tools were interesting too, like homemade graters for daikon or wasabi and tiny mesh cages for roasting sesame seeds.

We made two shorts stops at the Nishiki Tenman-gu Shrine and the Honnoji Temple:

Finally was time for a final pass through Nishiki Market to pick up several things to take to go for lunch in our hotel room. It was so hard to choose, but we ended up with bbq eel on a stick, tamago on a stick, a basket of tempura that included ginger root (delicious!) and an unidentified bitter green leafy veg, a bento box of various sushi items and two mysterious round things wrapped in newspaper that were some combination of dough, fish and possibly potato: