Hokkaido - Long Live the King

King Crab and Co.
When you can't read Japanese, you rely on context.  Clearly we were in store for a crab and seafood lunch.  Not just an ordinary one, our tour guide promised, but a superior one. He'd made an earlier observation in his tour-guide-slash-stand-up act: "What's the difference between the Chinese and the Japanese?  Simple, in China everything good is exported but the Japanese keep the best things to themselves."  Part of this theory was about to be put to the test.

 

Half of the cavernous building was a store stocked with seafood of various states: alive, freshly dead, and recently frozen.  The other half was a restaurant with views of the ocean where you eat your selection.

In Hokkaido, the crabs take top billing.  Embellishing foodies claim that their superiority is due to origin.  These giants, they say, spent their lives breast-stroking in pure northern oceans amongst sea ice while dining on fresh nutrients one rung lower on the food chain.  Due to their mythology or superior taste, they command high prices.  One costs 3,500 yen, which at current exchange rates, converts to about $44.

We weren't forced to "settle" for the frozen variety, no, not us.  We were special.  We were going to be eating crab in its purest form.

What that means in Japan is that Spiny would be plucked from his crowded tank, cleaved apart by a master with a razor sharp knife and superior technique and presented to us untouched by heat or flame.  Sashimi crab, or in other words, raw.  The idea should have been off-putting but all I thought was "hmmm, never tried that before, it should be interesting." 

It works perfectly for tuna, especially the fatty part of the tuna known as "toro."  Cooking this would ruin it.  We started with a healthy portion, resting on a bed of seaweed.  It was pretty impressive and compared to the prices you'd pay in Singapore, cheap.  I would've been perfectly happy eating plate after plate of this but it was just a warm up.

The sashimi crab didn't come unaccompanied, the platter was loaded with other raw goodies: clams, squid, octopus and oysters.  The orange stuff on the left is "uni."  More specifically, sea urchin gonads.  It was by far the best I've ever had and the sole basis for my judgment of this meal as superior.  Raw crab, it turns out, is tough and stringy and better off cooked.  The Boss was singing my praises, amazed at my zeal for the uni.  I didn't see what the big deal was, I told him, I'd eaten street food in Bombay and that is truly daring.  Of course, that deserved a sake toast.  The Left Hand threw me a look like "shut up, I am already toasted."

On the way out, stuffed and snarky, the Dodo posed next to a new friend.  A seafood restaurant with a stuffed bear?  Welcome to Japan where less makes sense than you would expect.

Back on the bus I thought about what the tour guide had said.  It just might be true I admitted to myself.  Why give away the best stuff to some ignorant foreigners?