First Meal in Japan

Konbanwa students,

I arriving in Tokyo, Japan on Tuesday, October 14Th after a 10 hr. and 20 minute flight. That was more than the 9 hours I thought it would take! And I lost a day by crossing the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean. You must look at your world map, and you will see it marked as a mostly straight line. Narita Airport is in the rural part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture, so it took approximately 2 hours to reach our hotel through heavy traffic. It was raining, very overcast, and around 6:00p.m. so no one in the bus I traveled in was interested in taking any pictures at that point in our trip. When we reached the Hotel New Otani, we had been told that we should go out to dinner with one of the Japanese alumni (you will probably have to look this word up to know what it means) who were part of the original Fulbright Program and had therefore spent time in the United States. Some of the 160 teachers who are in my group decided not to do this, but to go to bed early. Since I want to make the most out of experiencing Japanese culture, I knew that I could sleep after I went out to dinner with the person I was chosen to share a meal and conversation with. I am very glad I did take advantage of this opportunity.
There were 4 of us who went out with Tabe san. Tabe san is a retired university professor who taught for 55 years, and was not only very interesting, but also gave us information about Japanese food and how to eat it. When he asked us what kind of food we would like to eat, we said "Japanese, of course!" Since Tokyo is an international city, many cuisines(that is French for different foods based on their country of origin), are available here---we could have had MacDonald's if we wanted too, but we didn't! This picture is just one of the dishes that we tried last night. I took a picture of it since it came on one plate, unlike the other dishes that we ate, and I thought it had the best "presentation". Presentation is a word that cooks and chefs (those are highly paid cooks)use to describe how food is made to look on a plate. Japanese chefs are very good at presentation because the way food looks on a plate is important. The eyes, the nose, the taste are the senses that the Japanese like to make sure are being used when they eat. Everything we ate I thought was very good, but I liked this dish the best. Can you tell what it is? Along with eating good and appealing food is having good conversation and a good time. So we ate and talked, and had a very good time.
Did you guess what this dish is? It is called Shashimi, and it is a variety of paper-thin raw fish atop finely a finely cut vegetable that we also ate. The leaves are good for digestion Tabe san told us, so we ate those too.