bento | Aimee Weinstein, Tokyo Writer

Today my little lunch bunch ate at Kozue, the Japanese restaurant at the top of the Park Hyatt hotel in Shinjuku. It was a magnificent experience! The entire wall is windows looking out onto the city. It wasn’t clear enough to see Fuji-san, but from our perch on the 40th floor, we could see straight through to Yokohama to the north.

If the view wasn’t enough, the food was exquisite. Served by beautiful young women in stunning kimono, the black lacquer bento box practically told a story in its intricate design and contents. The first course was a bit of egg tofu in a soy milk sauce, and a clear miso soup with a dumpling made of flounder, along with a taste of burdock and ginger in it. And then came the big, two-story box. On the top there was katzuo (bonito) sashimi, and other small delicacies including a tiny squid, a shrimp head, a bit of egg rolled with cheese and a miniscule mound of sauteed spinach. The bottom layer held some grilled mackerel, simmered vegetables and two small dumplings of shrimp and corn. We paired it with a decadent glass of

The contents of the bento – both levels.

Sancerre from the Loire Valley of France.

Mango tart and the sugary-est whipped cream I’ve ever tasted!

After we lingered over lunch itself, we repaired to the lounge on the forty-first floor where we had coffee and

dessert. I chose a mango tart, but one friend had chiffon cake and the other had strawberry ice cream and

Close-up view of the intricate design of delicacies.

raspberry sherbet served in a large martini glass. In the lounge, which had floor-to-ceiling windows, we were able to see more around the building to various other sites of the city, including all the way toward the Imperial Palace.

It was truly an unbelievable afternoon and I am privileged to have shared it with good friends. This was a celebratory lunch for our last meeting since one member is

Shrimp and corn dumpling

repatriating shortly. But if I know us, it’s just for now. As expats know, it’s never goodbye for good – it’s just for now – more of a see you later. And it’s said with all the love we can muster.

I had the fortune to attend a cooking lesson of sorts from internationally acclaimed chef Hiroshi Nagashima, the head chef at Shisui in Tsukiji. If you’ve ever wondered about how the Japanese learn to decorate their plates of food so beautifully, look no further. Nagashima sensei showed our group how to push a carving knife delicately into a carrot slice on an angle to create a flower and to cut a notch out of a slice of daikon to make a butterfly’s wings. He made frogs out of cucumbers and a beautiful basket out of a huge slice of daikon that he patiently cut around until it was translucent and then rolled back up to form the inside of the basket. His hands patiently formed each creation, slowly and gently rounding the cucumber to form the back of the frog. His knives were sharpened to a fine point and edge and he wielded them expertly in ways that I couldn’t begin to replicate. Included in the cost of the lesson was a bento lunch for each participant – photo of the gorgeous and delicious creations below.