Party in Ginza - Mr Ikki

After shopping all Saturday in Ameyoko and Akihabara, it was time for a spectacular dinner in Ginza. What's that you ask? Did we really have dinner in Ginza, the most exclusive and expensive shopping and restaurant district in all of Japan? Yes we did my friends, oh yes we did! As usual, Dean and his Mom did a great job in finding us an awesome restaurant that could seat all fourteen of us in a private room. It was a Japanese food fest that night with some no holds bar sake drinking as well.

Tonight we feasted like Kings and Queens! Sashimi, King Crab, Monksfish Liver, you name it, we ate it. We were halfway through this sashimi boat before I remembered to take a picture of it for posterity. We started the night with a few beers and then switched to sake. Not the small sake bottles mind you, but the 1.8 liter bottles! It wasn't long before we had "drunk" the place dry of this particular brand of sake so we switched brands. A few bottles later and they were out of this sake as well. Something about the beer and sake in Japan that make it taste better than anything you'll ever have in the States.

My buddy Kurt decided that tonight in Ginza was the night that he was going to put to use what Taisho from Naruyama had taught us a few days ago. If you recall from an earlier posting, while having chankonabe at Naruyama, Taisho taught us "Ikki" which means to down a drink in one chug or take it as a shot. Well Kurt, or Mr. Ikki as he became known that night, decided to test everyone's tolerance for sake by toasting ikki after ikki until we couldn't ikki no more. (I'm sorry that I don't have a picture of Kurt doing his ikki, but I was too busy holding up my own glass and trying to keep up!) Kurt was a man on a mission, who did not know the meaning of the word failure. Mission accomplished my friend, good job!

So how does one end the perfect meal in Ginza? Why, with more beer of course! After leaving the restaurant we walked down the street a bit to some kind of European style beer hall. Dean knows the name of the place and my memory becomes a little foggy at this point in the game. I do remember that this place happened to serve Yebisu Dark, which is one of Dean's favorite beers, hence the reason for stopping by in the first place. Huge steins of dark beer appeared suddenly as I started to catch my second wind of the evening. As stuffed as I was from our awesome Ginza dinner, I just couldn't help but order some deep fried oysters from the menu here. About an our later as we were all ready to explode from our second meal of the evening, we decided to call it a night. The cool night air and brisk walk to the train station woke everyone up and we all got back to our hotel, safe and content.