More tastes

• Fugu (blowfish). Though the connoisseurs apparently like to include just a sliver of the cyanide-laced organs, enough to give the tongue a tingle, the ordinary flesh is white and meaty, and a bit bland.
• Pancake/omelette Okonomiyake in Hiroshima, made with eggs and a mixture of ingredients — seafood, vegetables and bacon.
• Eggs boiled in Umi Jigoku (‘sea hell’) a giant steaming cauldron in Beppu. They taste just like boiled eggs.
• Proper conveyor-belt sushi at Fujimaro in Fukuoka. Sea-urchin is surprisingly tasty.
• Half-width Nagasaki speciality udon noodles, flavoured with yuzu paste, an intense citrus taste.
• Deep-fried breadcumb-battered whale, from a shop in Nagasaki licensed to sell as food the byproducts of Japan’s ‘scientific’ whaling. Very meaty, almost like beef, but with an indefinable tang of the sea.

Hamburger Curry in Piss Alley

Not nearly as bad as it sounds. Choose your curry sauce, its strength, a quantity of rice, and then add something to put on top of it. Eat with a spoon. Also on the menu: sashimi for breakfast at Tsukiji market, and raw horse meat, dipped in ginger soy, at the Lion beer hall in Ginza. And a beer, too, for the first time in 5 1/4 years.