Tempura seems to be the ultimate fried food.  On Friday for lunch we had two pieces of tempura as a part of a set menu.  One was a shrimp – delicious and delicate.  It came with the head and tail on, but we chose NOT to eat them.  The second piece was some kind of long pepper.

Friday night I ate curry soup, which requires a post of its own.  It also came with a tempura shrimp and two tempura green beans.  The shrimp was good, but not as good as the one we ate for lunch.  The beans were completely amazing.

Saturday night we decided to eat in a tempura restaurant.  We selected it since it was located in the complex where we are staying and we could find it on a map.  Not the strongest criteria.  We sat at the counter.  I love sitting at the counter, or bar in Japan.  In the US, Dean loves sitting at the bar, but my legs get tired since they are not that long.  The counters or bars here in Japanese restaurants are just my size!  Sitting at the bar we could watch the chef cooking the tempura.  We shared a set meal which was made up of 6-8 small courses.

It started with pickles and quickly moved to various pieces of fish.  Shrimp was served in two pieces – one was the body and the other was the head.  I think each of the shrimp was just sliced in half down the middle.  It was good, we did not eat much of our shrimp heads.

Our place settings included a bowl for some grated daikon and sauce, and a small dish to put the pieces we did not eat into.  Like the shrimp heads…

I think we had two or three pieces of fish, all tasty and then we saw the eel come up for cooking.  I’ve seen live eels at Chinese groceries in the US, and in the markets in China but had not eaten one before (at least not to my knowledge).  I was afraid.  It came in a large snake-like piece, with some skin.  I confess a serious feeling of dread.  But Dean popped a piece into his mouth and said it was good. He was right – just like eating fish.

After the eel, our waitress told us the next course was the daily special.  She reported it was fish stomach, and showed us on the menu.  I was not familiar with it.  She also told us that most foreigners don’t like it and offered us something else.  We decided we would have plenty of time to eat a fish stomach over the next two years and had lotus root instead.

We also had eggplant, some kind of squid, mushroom and some kind of bean that looks like a grape.  We had these beans with our sushi too, I think they might be soy beans but I am not sure.

The final course was scallops, they were available tempura style, or on rice or in soup.  We had them on rice, and miso soup came on the side.  The scallops were small, and kind of mixed into a brown sauce then fried up together en masse.  I was not sure about this, but they were delicious.  It was also the second time we have had miso soup with tiny clams in it.  They are hard to eat, but delicious.

The meal ended with green tea, some kind of jelly and jellied beans, they were better than they sound.  Tempura is interesting, since you really eat just one or two pieces of each item, you can eat lots of different things.  The tempura coating also keeps most of the food from tasting oily.  Maybe in time I will even like shrimp heads.