Naruyama - Taisho's Chankonabe

After finishing our tour of the Edo-Tokyo Museum, we headed over to "Nauryama" for a wonderful chankonabe dinner. The above picture is of our group standing in front of the Naruyama restaurant with it's namesake and owner Naruyama, a retired "Rikishi" or sumo wrestler. This is my second favorite group picture from our Japan trip. If for some reason you weren't quite able to pick out Naruyama in this picture, he would be the large fellow wearing the white apron and galoshes doing the sumo pose in front of us.

Chankonabe is a Japanese hot pot dish or stew that is usually prepared at your table. It is filled with a variety of different items that are simmered in a prepared broth. We tried the shio (salt) and kim chee chankonabe and both were excellent. Both nabes included chicken, pork, tofu, carrots, green onions and a whole bunch of other stuff I can't remember. The grand finale was the addition of udon noodles to the cooked down broth after all of the original items were eaten. Chankonabe's claim to fame is that it's the "caloric staple" of sumo wrestlers who eat vast quantities of the stuff as regular meals to keep up their weight and stamina. In the sumo world, chanko is usually prepared by a junior wrestler and often has a reputation of containing whatever is available to the cook. The Japanese consider chanko a nutritious food that it actually quite healthy if eaten in moderation. Of course, Rikishi do not eat in moderation, hence their massive size and girth. It is my understanding that a lunch of chankonabe is usually followed by a long nap.

Dinner at Naruyama was excellent. Besides the chankonabe we were treated to all sorts of other delicious dishes along with some tasty sake that went down a little too easy. There was a noticeable pattern that was beginning to take shape on this trip of always having great tasting food accompanied by delicious sake! Taisho (what we referred to Naruyama as) taught us a new word that night. On one of his visits to our table to check up on things, we asked him to have a drink with us. He gladly obliged and toasted us with the phrase "kanpai-ikki". Most of us were already aware that "kanpai" or "kampai" was the Japanese equivalent of "cheers" in English. What Taisho taught us was that by adding "ikki" after your toast it meant to down your drink as a shot! Ikki would end up being a very dangerous word while having dinner in Ginza on another night out. More on that to follow in a future post.

According to Dean and Mrs. Sakata, Naruyama had (or has) a father who was also a Rikishi that wrestled under the name Naruyama as well. This was Mrs. Sakata's favorite sumo wrestler when she was a young girl. In fact, the elder Naruyama made it to the rank of Yokozuna which is the highest rank in sumo wrestling. I must say that the younger Naruyama wasn't quite as big as you would expect a sumo wrestler to be. In fact based on the comparison between the two of them in this picture, I would put my money on Dean in a real fight. No offense or disrespect intended to Naruyama, especially since I would like to go back to his restaurant one day to enjoy his delicious chankonabe again.