True Wagyu (和牛)

A friend of mine treated me to a real feast. A friend of his from Kobe runs a wagyu teppanyaki restaurant in Ginza. He had been telling me for years that he would take me there on one of my trips to Japan, and finally our schedules aligned properly such that we could make the trip.

This restaurant serves only the highest Kobe beef. It goes without saying that the meat comes from Kobe, with a pre-meal history of Kobe beef and Tajima beef written in English and Japanese (I got the English version - regardless how well you read or speak a language, it is nice sometimes to read something in your native tongue).

I'm not sure how the blog formats the images, so I'll just write everything here and ask that you refer to the images wherever they end up on the page.

My lesson on this trip was オウギュウ. I had no idea what he was saying. Big beef? King beef? Middle cut of beef? There are various kanji that have the reading "おう" but none of it made sense.

Turns out he was being a cheeky tart. It was おう for オウジ or "Aussie beef". After we ate he said "it was really Aussie beef." and watched my eyes grow wide. Then he said "ウソウソ" for "just kidding".

But was he really joking or not? I wonder...

Anyway - it was delicious!