Two weeks ago, on a Thursday evening, I had a great dinner in Tokyo at the Hibiki Dynamic Kitchen and Bar. Hibiki are a variety of famous Japanese whisky’s made by Suntory.
As a first starter, we enjoyed very tasty fresh sashimi. If you ever had a sashimi in a good restaurant in Japan you will never be pleased again eating sashimi in any Japanese restaurant in the rest of the world. The fish is melting on the tong. It seems that the fish would have been still 15 minutes ago in the sea. Only having these high quality food every second day or just once a week would be a motivation for me to move, work and life in Japan.
Next to the wonderful sashimi we had, an on the table fresh prepared, salad. The spices have been crunched with a very traditionally stamper and then all ingrediencies got mixed together. I am still wondering what kind of salad this has been. The taste has been a mix of a cucumber and an avocado but more crispy.
We started with a beer, continued with smooth sake and finished with several Hibiki whisky’s on the rocks and as a highball.
The variety of starters, with tempura, soya beans, marinated fish, bean cheese prepared with passion and love have been amazing. The main dish has been a backed stew of egg plants. Next to Japanese potato salad and sashimi are egg plants my most loved vegetable.
We finished this fantastic dinner with big saba (mackerel) nigiri. A dream.
My advise, if you come to Tokyo in the future, visit this place I am sure your will love it.
On this business trip I took my Fujifilm X-PRO3 Black and the TTArtisan 50mm f1.2 and the TTArtisan 23mm f1.4 lens with me. To be very honest, so far I only used the TTArtisan 23mm f1.4 lens. With it´s small focus distance of only 20cm from sensor to object to image, also food photography is so easy to realize. My credo, not only for food pictures, is “If you are not happy with your photo, you have not been close enough.”
It might have been, caused by the fact that I got infected with Covid-19 in Japan and had to keep quarantine for 10 days in a very small hotel room in Tokyo (all hotels rooms in Tokyo are very small but highly functional), that I did not have the opportunity to use the TTArtisan 50mm f1.2. Who knows.
For me it´s clear, on my next business trip I will only take a 23-25mm lens. This will be great for Landscape, Travel, Street, Portrait and Food Photography. A typical allrounder lens. More and more the Fujifilm X100 series makes sense to me as the only camera some one needs. This camera has also a 23mm fixed lens but with only an opening of f2. Also the fact that this is an AF camera and manual focusing, which still is of course possible, will be done by wire still keeps me being happy with the Fujifilm X-PRO series which allows me to use manual lenses.
I am looking forward as usually for your opinions.
