Kaiseki

ALERT: unseemly amounts of photos of strange food ahead. If you're not excited about baby raw squid served in their own ink, you might want to skip this one.

Do you recognize these people?

Ian and Tiara, founders of Farang Industries, and their honored guests, Steve and Barbara.

Committed to bringing you the best reporting possible, these brave gourmands traveled into the heart of Ohara, Japan, and donned robes to endure two days of soaking in hot springs, reading quietly by the garden, and partaking in never-ending kaiseki meals. We had two dinners and two breakfasts during our stay. The breakfasts generally involved salmon, rice, pickles, miso soup, and several forms of bean curds. They were delicious, and though I said at the time that I prefer my Western breakfasts, I have been craving miso, rice, and pickles like a madwoman for the past few weeks. Japan, we miss you....

Dinner is a real event, served in your room (or in our case, in mom and dad's room) by your own personal attendants. The entire meal is designed to reflect the season, and each course is exquisitely presented on flatware specifically chosen for that dish. It's like eating art, though generally it tastes better. Most of the courses were winners, and all of them were interesting. The following photos are of our dinner the first night of our stay. Our menu was in Japanese so we really don't know everything we ate, but here is my attempt to recreate the meal in roughly the order it was served.

An appropriately strange and colorful start. Soft pink tofu with broccoli, a green veggie and wasabi sauce, and raw little fishies. Not bad flavor-wise, and pretty cool texturally.

From left to right: raw octopus tentacles, radishes, bamboo shoots, butterfly-shaped radish, mochi, shrimp head, and broccoli.

Yuba. This stuff is weird but delicious. Soy milk is boiled and forms a skin, which is removed and eaten. Boiling and skin eating continues until all the milk is gone. We got a nice ponzo-esque dipping sauce for the skin.

Vegetable stock with some green veggies and this pretty package containing various forms of bean curd, including a red one that mom won't be wanting again, thank you very much.

Mmmm....sashimi. Mmmm some more.

Fried little fishies, lotus root, and some bean curds and sauces that I really don't remember. These fish were better than the ones that I got by surprise at a bar when I thought I had ordered salmon.

A sweet, eggy, creamy soup with some leafy greens. Also, adorable heart-shaped radishes.

Whole, raw baby squid served in their own ink. See below.

I feel really bad about this one. I was the first among the four of us to pop one of these little guys in my mouth, and I just could not hide the look that came over my face when I tried to swallow it. I managed to get it and another one down, but this was the one plate I didn't finish. I'm not much for squid sushi anyway, and the guts and ink just didn't improve the experience for me. Ian was a star and ate them all. Now that he's had rat soup in Laos, he's reaching Anthony Bourdain levels of food tolerance.

Various bean curds and root vegetables. Not bad. Not great.

Pickles! These were served with steamed rice, which didn't really merit a picture. I don't think either of these pickles are the kind offered to me by a man in Ohara, who opened with the line: "Are you famous?" Tiara: "Umm, no." Pickle man: "These pickles are famous!"

Miso soup. I wish every meal began and/or ended with miso.

Yummy black sesame pudding with kiwi and STRAWBERRIES! Given the cost of fruit in Japan, I see now why our stay at the ryokan was so expensive. Seriously, it's wild. Someday I'll show you a picture of a $100 cantaloupe.

This meal was truly special and I feel so fortunate that we were able to partake in the kaiseki tradition. Our dinner the second night was equally, if not more, delicious, but actually featured a number of more familiar foods. Thanks, mom and dad, for treating us so well!