The Fast and the Furious - Ninja

Tuesday, we headed to the National Museum of Modern Art in Kitanomaru Garden near the Imperial Palace with Honda-san. She had never been to the museum, so it was really fun to go together. I don’t know much about Japanese modern art, but the museum contained some famous pieces that Honda-san was really happy to see in person. I really enjoyed learning more about contemporary Japanese art.

We also went to the nearby Craft Gallery which is part of the National Museum of Modern Art for a retrospective of a famous Japanese ceramic artist. To the right is a picture of the craft gallery

Later that evening, we met up with Yukiko at a ninja themed restaurant called Ninja in Akasaka. It was even difficult to locate the secret entrance. We were lead by a ninja hostess to our table but we had to first travel through a dark rocky cave with rock stairs leading us up and down through twisting paths. We passed by waterfalls and walked over streams, but then our path was blocked by a broken bridge and the ninja had to say some secret password so a draw bridge could drop and we could cross. It was dark and cave like throughout the restaurant.

Usually in America, themed restaurants are kind of cheesy and the food can be mediocre, but this place was really fun and the food was delicious. It was a modern/fusion Japanese restaurant. Some of the more interesting dishes included: tofu with a ninja star cracker, a wooden box with smoke seeping out that contained an egg with a special gelitain salad in it, some conk shells that had a string that the ninja lit and sparked, and stone soup.

The stone soup was great, it was in a bamboo bowl that had lots of fresh vegetables. The ninja waitress brought over a really, really hot stone that she put into the bowl with the vegetables and meat. It cooked the soup and then she came back and pulled out that stone and added another one. It was delicious thai tom yum soup.

Later a ninja magician visited our table and preformed a couple of magic tricks. We had a blast! Here is Julian and one of our ninja waitresses in front of the restaurant. She's holding a scroll with our exit fortune. I think Julian was a ninja in a former life.