During our visit to Japan, we wanted to experience a Ryokan stay and at the same time, being able to break the language barrier. We found out that many of the Ryokans didn’t even have English websites, and so making a reservation was a problem. Even if we could make a reservation, there was no guarantee that the Ryokan staff would be able to converse in English.

Thus, we did our research and eventually booked a stay at Yama No Chaya via Ryokan Collection. The review on the excellent Yama No Chaya will be posted at another time. Meanwhile, let me share the fantastic Kaiseki-style dinner at Yama No Chaya – no doubt the highlight of our stay.

Kaiseki : A traditional multi-course Japanese dinner.

The actual visit to Yama No Chaya was in November 2011. This is a back-dated review.



Instead of a restaurant or dining area, dinner is served in individual rooms! Before dinner commences, the staff who was assigned to serve our food first prepares our dining table. Unknown to us, we were just about to start a two-hour dinner – a heavenly experience.



Written in Japanese, this piece of paper is the menu. No, we’re not going to choose from the list of items. Instead, we are going to have all the items listed on it! Well, we don’t understand Japanese, but the English-speaking staff would be giving us more information on each and every dish when it is served.



The sweet lady who is serving us for dinner :



To be honest, there are a lot of food that I can’t remember eating, or what they are. I’ll just throw out some details as long as I can recall them.
Brightly-colored appetizers laid out exquisitely on the serving tray. We’re just getting started and there is already eight items being laid out on the tray, and this is just the appetizer.





Sashimi with what looks like deep fried prawn “whiskers”.







To keep the sashimi cold and fresh, it is being placed on top of a bowl of ice, separated by a piece of leaf – exquisite.



-- continued at next post