Tengu

Tengu Restaurant Tokyo

Tengu is a chain of izakaya restaurants found all over Tokyo.  I have been to a couple of them, but I find the one just outside the Shinjuku station convenient.  It is located upstairs of the UniQlo store right near the station exit.  We proceeded to have a great time eating some very tasty inexpensive dishes.  This Tokyo restaurant offers yakitori (grilled chicken gizzards, along with regular chicken parts) 126 Yen per skewer, kari kari gobo salad (deep fried shaved burdock root on a tossed salad with fried shrimp) 500 Yen, cheese pizza 600 Yen.  The restaurant serves the more traditional dishes like sashimi, salads, tempura, oysters, chicken katsu, to mention a few, all at a reasonable price.  This Tokyo restaurant serves drinks that are quite reasonable too, with 180 ml glasses of sake' for 399 Yen, glasses of shochu for 400 Yen, and mugs of beer for 500 Yen.  The izakaya is noisy with mostly working folks, but with super drinks and lots of great, inexpensive food, it's worth it.  For more information on this topic or Japan, please go to http://traveljapan-us.com/.

Sapporo Nijo Market

Sapporo Nijo Market
Just a few minutes walk from Tanukikoji Arcade in Sapporo, the Sapporo Nijo Market is an interesting place to visit. You will find the freshest fish, scallops, sea urchins, shrimp, squid, octopus and king, queen, and hairy crab. The taraba gani(king crab)of the highest quality can be found here from 5,000 yen to 7,000 yen, or more depending on size and quality. I personally purchased a very high quality large king crab, with all legs intact, hard shell and just caught for 7,000 yen. My purchase of king crab and other seafood items was made at the Maruichi Market from Mikami-san, but the vendors are very friendly, and if you buy enough you can bargain with them for a better price. Dried seafood is plentiful, and we just enjoyed the dried and smoked scallops, smoked octopus legs, dried squid, and some of the soy sauce prepared sea kelp.


We even had an early morning seafood breakfast at one of the restaurants in the fish market. At the Donburi Chaya restaurant I had the Kaisen assorted seafood bowl. 9 toppings including maguro(tuna)sashimi, salmon sashimi, ikura(salmon roe), hotate(scallop)sashimi, king crab meat, botan ebi(peony)shrimp, uni(sea urchin), egg roll, and yama imo(diced mountain yam) on a bed of delicious rice along with hot Japanese tea for 1,449 yen. You can try a steaming bowl of miso soup with crab inside as flavoring for an additional 200 yen. Awesome breakfast!

You can easily see why the Sapporo Nijo Market is a Travel Japan-US favorite.

Location: Just at the end of Tanukikoji Arcade on 2nd St. Fish vendors open at 7:00AM and close around 6:00PM. Restaurants open a little later.

For more information and pictures on Japan: http://travljpn.blogspot.com/.  For other articles on Japan, please go to http://traveljapan-us.com/.