Wednesday 22 November: izakaya crawl with my dad's accountant, Ichiro, and his wife, Atsuko (who are both my age.)
Scallops with umeboshi sauce.	Grilled crab legs!
Fins of ray, grilled briefly at the table.	Someone's salmon was delivered to our table by mistake...
Thursday 23 November: A quick shinkansen ride to Kyoto, to meet up with Íris, our Icelandic friend who's studying there.
We went to a restaurant in Kiyamachi, where we had a nice little alcove to ourselves.	"Fluffy autumn steam", silken tofu, slices of fish (barracuda) and grated yam steamed & eaten with yuzu & wasabi. Mmm...
A very rare dish: natto made of big black soybeans, rather than the usual small ones. Less slime-to-beans ratio than the usual natto, but delicious! (Apologies for the out-of-focus photo.)	A salad of mizuna, daikon and Kyoto pickles, with very thin strips of crispy fried potato on top. We had other excellent tofu and veg dishes too, but again we were too busy eating to photograph them...
We then moved to a Japanese style bar, where Íris tried this refreshing green tea & lemon cocktail. It being the height of tourist season in Kyoto, all cheap hotels were fully booked, so we had to say good-bye before 10PM and catch the last shinkansen back home. It was a nice evening though (and no hangover next day :-)
To Part 4