David @ Tokyo

One minute's walk from Tokyo's Shimokitazawa station (a youth mecca several minutes train ride out of Shinjuku and Shibuya), is an izakaya called "Bunbuku". It's one of the favourite izakaya of some of my friends who live in the vicinity - they introduced it to me towards the end of 2005.

Around this time last year I noticed that they had a minced whale offering (kujira tataki - yukke fuu) on their daily menu (photo courtesy of Google images). Naturally I tried it out, and found it to be pretty good, although slightly expensive compared to other dishes on offer. I seem to remember having it on at least 2 occasions.

Some months later when I was there again, the minced whale was gone, but a "whale bacon" offering had appeared on the daily menu. Again it goes without saying that I tried it out as well, and found that my impression of whale blubber had improved quite a bit since I first tried whale blubber at a Sushi restaurant in Akasaka (Photo again from Google images).

I was out with my friends again last night and we decided to head to Bunbuku first, having not been there for a while. The daily menu gave me a surprise - not one, but two whale dishes on offer:


Three from the top - minku kujira sashi for 1,000 yen, and a few further rows down, the kujira bacon item that I've had before at 500 yen.

I had minke whale sashimi at another restaurant I often frequent the other day, so passed on the sashimi this time, but had the whale bacon again to get some omega-3 fatty acids.

Even without the whale meat offerings, Bunbuku is a good first stop for a night out in Shimokitazawa.

Here's Bunbuku's site at Gurunavi for all of those of you in Tokyo. It looks like they are part of this chain with restaurants in other parts of Tokyo as well.

Labels: Bunbuku, whale meat market, 分福