Hello everyone, I'm Potoraku Fudotaku.
And welcome, this is my friend, Filipporo-san.
Welcome, thank you.
Good morning, friend-san.
Okay, I think they'll never allow me to go back to that place.
To that country, after this intro.
How are you, man?
Good, man.
Good, good, good, good.
Welcome back.
I returned from, after 25 days in Japan.
So, it was for sure the trip of my life, no questions.
It was incredible, man.
Was it everything you expected it to be?
I mean, yes, I could say so.
There were some things that I really wanted to do.
Like, for example, going to a super nice sushi omakase.
So, I had the opportunity to go to two different ones.
And I really got, you know, on the sushi episode when I was talking about the seasoning,
and I said, what's the name of this dressing?
And you were like, dude.
You know, like, you were like super offended of me calling it a dressing.
And I really got, like, why you were feeling like that.
Like, you go to like a real omakase place.
I would describe it as a religious experience.
Like, it has this whole ritualistic thing around it.
Everybody is super quiet and respectful.
Just by coincidence, I happened to go to both experiences with Karen.
You know, like, the first one, it was the only one that I managed to book because also
something that I learned from this trip.
And if you're planning to go to Japan in March, I don't know if you know this because I know
you were a broadcast student when you were there the last time.
But you should start making bookings right now, like three months advance.
That's like the timing for the really good places.
You need like that kind of buffer timing.
So I just managed to find one sushi place that I was like, okay, like it was easy to
book through the normal online platforms.
And when I arrived there, which was, by the way, difficult to find, I got lost.
Fortunately enough, I had enough.
I wanted to arrive early.
So at the end, I ended up running in the middle of Shibuya, like, oh, I'm going to be late.
You know, like, and it was this normal apartment.
I went to a fourth floor.
I opened the door, I sit down and then suddenly, hey, Eric, you know this place too?
Really?
Like that.
And he had brought me like through Instagram, he brought me because we were having lunch
the next day, also in a sushi place.
And he brought me, okay, see you soon.
Five minutes later.
And going with Kevin was really, he knows so much about, first of all, the language.
He understands everything, or at least enough of what the chef is explaining, but also about
the fishes, the different ways that they're processed and everything.
And he was explaining me everything.
So that was like a real plus being with Kevin in both places.
Being with Kevin, that's just excellent company, you know, especially in this sort of setting.
Because the first one, they spoke English, they were explaining the dishes in English
and everything, which is relatively uncommon.
The second one, no English at all.
And so in the middle of the experience, the chef would stop and he would start talking.
And then Kevin would say, oh, he's asking if somebody wants like an extra nigiri of
the ones we already had and blah, blah, blah.
And then somebody came and he ordered, you know, like, I was like, dude, I'll have what
you have, like, don't let me complicate things, you know, like, I'll be fine.
And yeah, that was one of the highlights for, of course, going to both of these places.
And the second one was like, well, the first one was one specialized on the aged fish.
So the guy would, every nigiri, he would say the aging of each piece, like this is tuna,
14 days.
This is da, da, da, seven days.
This is blah, blah, blah, three days.
Everything was aged.
And then the third one was a disable of sugita-san, which is one of the top sushi chefs in Japan.
For me that was the best sushi I've ever had and the best sushi experience I've ever had.
But it's funny because both talking with Kevin and also with Santiago from Mas, Santiago
Fernandez, who is now a two mission star chef in Tokyo.
I was chatting with him and both told me like, okay, this is from the mid level, is one of
the best, but this is still mid level.
There is a level above that, which is top level.
And there is a difference between both things.
You know, like for me it was also okay to, you know, to have mid level.
Maybe next time I go to Japan, I managed to get to maybe Saito or Sugita and all those
places are insanely difficult to book.
You have to book like one year in advance, something like that.
Yeah, Saito, no Saito, you can't actually book anymore.
You used to be able to book like a year in advance.
Now it's by invitation only.
Yeah, like these places are really difficult to get.
Like, but if you know someone that knows someone, you know, there's always a way.
But I mean, I'll try to get, at least try, you know, like to go one of the top names
next time I go.
I also got like a super nice recommendation list from Noma, since we went to Noma to interview
Christina, Christina Mejia from Noma Project.
And she gave us a recommendation list they have.
And there were some other sushi places that are not Saito or Sugita, but are also like,
like top places that are not as insanely impossible to get.
Because there it says Sugita, incredibly difficult to book.
Saito, incredibly difficult to book.
That's really funny.
And yeah, what else?
Like we did, I mean, I did like formally three cities, maybe four.
But apart from that, like three extra cities, like one day trips.
So a total of like seven, eight cities.
You're also planning to go, you plan to do Tokyo and Kyoto, right?
Yes.
So I'm also finalizing planning to go.
I'm like about to book flights and I'm going to go end of March.
Okay.
Hopefully catching a little bit of the cherry blossom season.
And yeah, my plan is, my plan is to go with my mother.
Okay.
I'm doing a mother son trip because we were talking about it and she always wanted to
go, but she would never ever go by herself.
Right?
So last time I saw her, I was like, you know what, let's just go together.
Like fuck it.
Let's just go.
And we're planning to go to Tokyo, of course, because arriving and leaving from Tokyo is
the most convenient.
But then definitely going to Kyoto for the most time, maybe a little bit of Osaka.
And she actually asked me yesterday, she was like, Hey, I really want to go to the countryside.
So which is a little bit more difficult to plan.
And I'm not quite like, if like, even though I'm, you know, it's been a very long time
since I lived in Japan, but like I can go to Tokyo and I can fill two, three weeks with
stuff to do easy.
You know, a lot of, a lot of restaurants, a lot of activities, Kyoto the same, right?
But like planning a trip to the countryside, I'll have to research it a little bit better.
And, and try to get into it a little bit more.
A lot of people say it's like two different experiences, right?
I mean, like, first of all, going to Tokyo and going to Kyoto is two different experiences.
It's Tokyo, it's just, it's its own thing.
Completely different experience.
Absolutely.
Like, yeah, like Tokyo is like a metropolis, you know, you could compare it to Paris or
New York.
That's why also even you and some other people told me, because I was with this mentality
of I want to have only ultra Japanese food from Japan.
And they told me if you, if that's your mentality in Tokyo, you're not going to have like the
full Tokyo experience because you're going to have the best pizza in the world.
You can have the best French restaurants in the world, like the best Chinese restaurants
in the world are in Tokyo.
So like that's something you should also experience while in the city.
And so I did, I took the advice, also the best croissants, like, you know, like it's,
it really was exploring all these cuisines with the Tokyo infused, you know, because
it's not, it's not an Italian pizza.
It's a Tokyo pizza, you know?
For sure.
Absolutely.
While Kyoto is super traditional, I would say Kyoto super worth visiting museums to
watch like all Japanese art, pottery shops all over the place.
I would say it's also the most touristic.
And if you're going and doing cherry blossom, I mean, like I was so happy and so thankful
that some of the days that I was traveling, it was really low season.
I would go to this super touristy places and they were empty.
And I was like, wow, I'm so lucky.
And also like the summer was really delayed probably due to global warming.
So the, instead of, I was expecting a winter.
It was still autumn with the beautiful yellow and orange leaves of the maple, Japanese maple
trees.
So I went to Harashiyama, this forest in Kyoto.
I really recommend you to go there to visit.
There are like three things, like one temple, one garden that used to be the garden of a
movie star, but it's beautiful.
And also this mirror museum.
I recommend you to visit those three things.
And also what we did, we booked in the temple.
They have this Buddhist vegetarian restaurant that is in the Michelin guide and it costs
like 40 years, like lunch.
And it's like a long menu.
One of the highlights, like doing the whole thing that day, like going really early to
the forest, the bamboo forest, the tree gardens, the temple, and having lunch there, super
nice.
And also visiting that there's also a museum just next to that forest.
That was my favorite museum with super old Japanese ink drawings.
Beautiful.
Amazing.
Yeah.
That's exactly the sort of stuff that's, yeah, just kind of like delving in and just kind
of like bathing in like the surroundings, you know, you're just kind of like putting
yourself in, you're floating along and you're just really soaking it in.
It was the same when I was, I had a similar experience like when I was in Hong Kong and
Hong Kong is like super, super bustling, right?
Hong Kong is a very cool city.
There's a monastery on a neighboring island called Lantau.
It was a similar experience because it's like quite touristic.
It's a Buddhist monastery.
It's very cool because either you hike up the mountain of this island or you take like
a cable car.
And of course it's like, there's like, you know, shops and stuff like that to finance
the monastery.
But when I arrived there, first of all, it was like really cool scenery.
They have this massive huge Buddha statue on the top of the mountain that like people
like make a pilgrim sort of like up to, you know, but when I arrived, they were about
to close the monastery for visitors and you walk inside into the courtyard and there's
these like big basins of ash with these huge incense burners, these huge incense sticks.
And you walk inside and you're not allowed to film in there.
And there was a door like a little bit open to like one of the inside chambers where you
could see all the like ceilings like with gold paintings.
And the monks were in there having evening prayer.
So they were just like walking in a circle chanting the prayer.
And man, it was so magical, like so, so, so magical.
I actually, to my shame, I sneaked a little video just like off the corner.
And sometimes I still watch it because it's sort of like you can see the like carved dragon
of the like of the roof, you know, like underneath the roof painted with like the mountains in
the background.
You can hear this like quiet prayer chant.
It was so beautiful.
It was like exactly, it just reminded me of that when you say, because you just like go
somewhere and you like dissolve into the experience.
Yeah, yeah.
Like I had a few day trips.
For example, I went to this lake that is near Mount Fuji.
You know, like I can't think of a mountain more iconic than Mount Fuji, like at least
visually because you can't say Everest, okay, whatever.
But visually, it's not like, like it doesn't have like a specific iconic image, you know?
Excuse me.
What about the Matterhorn?
Never heard of it.
Okay.
What is it?
The Canary Islands.
The Matterhorn?
I know more Mount Teide.
Maybe that one.
Mount Teide, yes.
Also, yeah.
It's the Fuji of Europe.
Anyways, like I saw Mount Fuji already like a couple of times in the Shinkansen in the
bullet train and I was like, wow, like this is so impactful.
Like I want to go near.
And so I took like a day trip to Mount Fuji and I was like, wow, like I want to go near.
And so I took like a day trip from Tokyo to a lake.
And that was also like countryside, you know, like walking in the, there wasn't enough.
I also went to Ashinto-ist temple that has this insanely huge trees, like, and there
was like this coat of the trees that there were, two of them were married and, you know,
like bound with a lace and whatever.
And so that was also really going into a forest, taking a walk on the countryside, having like
this traditional food from the countryside, hoto, which was like a noodle soup from there.
So it's relatively easy to have like these day trips, also from Kyoto.
You can go to Nara, which is a day trip and you're near the deers and this kind of things.
Also from Nagoya.
And that was also one of the highlights, like our friend Yuwa Oki from Matcha Magazine organized
us a tour, a fermentation tour in the Chita Peninsula.
So we visited breweries of soy sauce, miso, mirin and sake to a traditional Japanese restaurant
there in the countryside, beautiful.
And for example, for me being in this soy sauce brewery, they were doing something I
was really curious about all my life because I've never seen it.
White soy sauce, white tamari, right?
Which is actually, it's not correct to call it soy sauce because it's mostly wheat.
That's why it's not so dark.
Incredibly delicious.
It's kind of like a soy sauce, but you find the hints of this kind of like nice sourdough
bread thing in the flavor and the aromas.
So we had that for lunch.
We had a sashimi and I see this light soy sauce I put and I was like, wow, for me that
was one of the bites of the trip.
Like, wow, incredible.
And just after that, we go to the brewery where they're actually making it and they
allowed us to try like the first, like in a cider house here in the box country, they
opened the fucking barrel of the soy sauce and the first thing that came out, we tried
that.
It was incredible, man.
Did you shout, Josh?
I wanted to.
No, no, when they did that, I was traveling with Bernie, this Canadian friend, and she
was like, oh no, we're not worthy to get this.
It was so over the top.
And then I asked my cousin, Walter-san, in Ibiza, like, hey, do you know about this sauce?
And she was like, yeah, I have it.
Nice.
Of course he does.
So that fermentation tour was beautiful.
Like also going to this super small sake breweries, to the oldest medium brewery in
Japan, also to a dark miso brewery.
So there's a castle in Nagoya that was like a whole day in a van traveling around.
Amazing.
Did you, I'm curious, you talked about your sushi experience, because I know when I was
in Japan, I also, I was like, okay, sushi for sure.
And that's why I also know exactly what you mean when you say this like, oh, this like
high mid range sushi, you know?
Yeah, because like at this level, I would say a low level is like a normal restaurant,
like everybody knows it's a restaurant.
But it's already like very good.
Yeah.
But at mid level is something else.
You know, it's really like, really like the chef is like a master of ceremony.
It has like this priesty kind of quality to it.
Like when he walks into the bar, you know, you know, it has like a strong presence.
And he will start like giving these negiris one by one in order.
And everything is so ritualistic, so ceremonial, you know, like for example, in the first one
where this sushi chef talking in English and everything, I was shooting and everything
was okay.
The second one, Kevin told me like, don't shoot here.
So I did anyway, but really sneaky, right?
Like no, not with my camera and from like, hey, look, but I wanted to get some shots
of that place.
But I realized that every time, for example, when Michelle went to Japan, I saw he posted
like a short video in a place like this, like in a top sushi place.
And it was really sneaky.
You know, it was not like he, you would, you would feel that he was not putting the camera
like, like a tourist, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
A hundred percent.
There's a, there's a, like a big no, no phone, no film policy in a lot of places.
Yeah.
But what I'm curious about is like, did you have any other food related experiences where
you had a little bit like your mind blown?
Like for example, for me it was, I had two very distinctive ones is when I went to a
yakitori place and I was like, what the fuck?
Like I did not know.
I was like, oh yeah, cool.
Let's go eat yakitori a little bit.
Chicken, chicken on the stick.
Yeah, cool.
Easy.
And then I went to an actual one and I was like, what the fuck?
And I had it with tempura also.
Right before I left, I was like, okay, tempura is tasty.
And then I went to a real tempura place and I was like, holy shit.
I went to a super good yakitori place in Osaka.
You know, they also have this quality of you would say like, you know, this guy is the
grill master.
And, and it reminds me a lot of a DJ, you know, like fine tuning all the time, like
tweaking a little bit, you know, everything he's, he was like, his eyes are all the time
on the grill and he's just tweaking, adjusting, equalizing with a seat, cutting, cutting out
if there's a piece that is to burn, you know, just making everything perfect.
And then you get this grill, like also what I love it that they do like nose to tail and
they start telling you, okay, this is the neck of the chicken.
These are the gizzards.
This is the butt.
And everything is just grilled to perfection, you know, like maybe a little bit raw and
then just in the very core, you know, like.
No, absolutely.
And for me, like what I noticed is that everything was piping hot, right?
And so my time in Japan really made me like realize how important temperature is in food
with like broths, you know, like dashi, et cetera.
You know, you go to really good ramen restaurants and the broth is piping, piping hot because
it's different sipping a soup that's piping hot and you can almost not drink it.
And you kind of ease up to it.
You drink a little bit and say, Oh God, you feel it in your whole body.
You keep drinking, eat the noodles.
It was the same with yakitori.
Like it was like something straight from the grill, not somebody took it from the grill,
take like took it off, put it on a cutting board, cut it, put it on a plate.
The waiter takes two minutes to get there and then you get it.
It's still hot.
That's not the same, right?
It's like full of full of life, full of energy, full of momentum.
Yeah, absolutely.
No, no, there were way too many things that impressed me.
But also like a super crazy experience we booked, which by the way is a new micro genre
of Japanese cuisine that I didn't knew, kushikatsu, which is original from Osaka, which are those.
I would describe them like nuggets on a stick of different things, like fried pan fried
things and then you have like this stick that, and it could be whatever, could be vegetables,
meats, fish, whatever.
So we booked at this place called Oshiyage 010 in Osaka, which was amazing.
So the thing about Osaka is that you have all these buildings that they feel like malls,
you know, like or buildings that have like, I don't know, six stores and in each store
there are like two top restaurants or bars.
So like, and it's a whole street full of that.
So you have hundreds of restaurants in a street.
It's super overwhelming and many of these are top places.
So we were there, we had some waiting time, like half an hour.
Oh, let's just do a cocktail, like whatever it's near.
So I looked up on something.
Also something they taught me is that don't take Google reviews as serious as in the West.
So you could find places that have 2.5 on Google and are amazing places.
So it's not like in the West that would never be the case.
If it's 2.5, it's going to be shit for sure.
So but this place had like 4.9, you know, like it was like, you know, like if it has
this kind of, it should be good.
We walk into this place, like a super beautiful, very minimalistic decorated bar with this
old man that wouldn't speak English, but he would use this translator app where he would
talk to the app and the app would talk to us in English.
And I told like, yeah, whatever, whiskey sour.
And he told me, no, no, no, you want to have the special gin tonic.
And I was like, okay, give me the special gin tonic.
Then I started shooting and the guy was no, no, no, no videos, only photos.
And I was like, okay.
So I took some pictures.
It was the best gin tonic I've had in my life, dude.
Like this guy comes, first of all, like the glass looked like a paper cup, you know, like
super clean.
And he says, it's ceramic.
The gin was inside there.
Okay.
And then he has like another extra glass full of ice and he would take this half limes,
right?
And he would completely empty and he would put them like on the other way around.
So you have the green peel on the inside, right?
So you had like a mini bowl, which was actually like a lime half, right?
And he would put that on top of the ice and the second glass.
And he would say, you pour the, from the, this ceramic glass into the bowl and you drink
from the lime bowl.
Okay.
And then, and then, and you do like that.
And I was like, okay.
So I started drinking and incredible.
And the guy started bringing out some snacks, like a mini burrata, like a dime sized burrata
in soy sauce.
Then a piece of ham with some drops of coffee oil.
Like I've heard like before, like this combination of coffee oil and coffee and ham, but I never
had it before.
And I had it, it was really impressive.
So like there were like this little snack, this little things.
And then he says like, yeah, I have the, this is my boss.
And he shows a picture and there's this like super vintage kind of style of chef, like
from the seventies.
It reminds me a lot of countries and mention, you know, like that kind of vibe, but Japanese.
And yeah, he has two Michelin stars.
The name of the place is Kahala, a famous chef from a place called El Buye was there
last week.
He really liked it.
Wow.
Yeah.
And I like, I'm really, I would love to go to that place.
They told me, yeah, but it's three months in advance to book.
And I was like, but I found so interesting the snacks they had around here that I was
like, oh man, I really need to try that place.
So then it was dude, like around 40 euros per cocktail.
I'm so glad we only had one.
I mean, I was like, wow, this is the most expensive drink I've ever paid in my life.
But I wasn't like angry or anything because the whole experience, the whole thing, even
though it was just half an hour, I think it was worth it.
To be honest, I say, I was really happy about having gone to that place, discovering this
chef, you know, this whole thing.
I was like, oh wow.
And then we went to the squishy cutlery place.
So Shiage 010, one of the highlights.
And there I had one of the top bites of the trip, which was a, a dude, a motherfucking
onagi burger with blue cheese.
Dude, it was like, Jesus, what the hell?
It was like, oh, what is this?
Please.
That's insane.
Incredible.
Wow.
So that wasn't one of the top bites.
Another of the top bites was this baby she bring me here at this second sushi place.
Then also I went to Chenken Ichi's restaurant in Tokyo.
Unfortunately, he passed away last year, but the restaurant is still open.
So one of the top bites there was I have this king crab soup with shark fin.
Oh yeah.
Shark fin, yeah.
Shark fin.
Exactly.
So I'm like all this texture, this thing.
And then on the bottom, I have this kind of like a tofu and I'm like, no, this is strange
tofu.
Like what is it?
Why is this so rich?
And then I look at the menu.
It was for grab pudding.
And I remember from Iron Chef, this guy using for graffa, Chinese cuisine, which I think
it's so interesting, you know?
It's really innovative actually.
Yeah.
But I mean, at the end of the day, duck, you know, like it's part of Chinese cuisine and
this is just part of a duck.
No, a hundred percent.
Yeah.
But that was also one of the top bites.
And yeah, there were too many, man.
I also have like a day trip to Kakagawa, which is it was like a one and a half hour from
Tokyo in Shinkansen.
My friend Barry O'Neill organized a visit to the Muto Brothers who have a restaurant
there that specializes only in fugu.
So it was like a whole kind of kaiseki menu, fugu in this beautiful place, like with a
private room with views to this beautiful garden and a lake.
And these guys, the Muto Brothers, they have this podcast in Japanese called Tabemono Radio.
These are like really erudites about Japanese food history.
So they unfortunately they don't speak English, but I was able to record everything on audio,
so I will have it translated.
But he started giving this cathedral about fugu, you know, like they started talking
that it started being consumed 10,000 years ago, that samurais weren't allowed to eat
it, like man, like story and story and story about.
And then we had like first sashimi, then fried, on nulls to tail, all of the pieces of the
fish, like the shirako, which by the way, one of the big revelations on my trip, I never
had shirako before.
I don't understand why this is not consumed in the West.
Shabu shabu, I mean, all the possible ways you could have fugu, we had it.
You want to explain to listeners what shirako is?
It's like fish male genitalia, right?
Like fish sperm or like, yeah.
So and the texture is like very creamy.
Also, one of the top bites was in the first sushi place I went with Kevin.
I think aging korobu is the Instagram account because they specialize on aging fish.
And it was kind of like a creamy rice risotto like thing with shirako in the middle.
And that was like, I had shirako like at least six, seven times and completely different
ways.
And for me that was also one of the top bites, that creamy rice with shirako.
The texture is a thing, it's this creamy thing, like very, very nice.