Woah! It's chicken's KNEES?

Yay! Had a successful day at work today: Managed to get the video conferencing camera working (it's been a problem) and sorted out a login script and printer mappings for the Tokyo office. Also managed to stay awake, which was a minor miracle on 2 or 3 hours sleep.
Had a couple of odd 'events' during the day. You know when you're fast asleep and you fall over in a dream and it wakes you up? Well that happened to me 3 times today...while I was awake. Suddenly jumped through the roof and the adrenaline kicks in. Weird. Probably jet lag or something. Certainly not a reaction to the chicken knees as I'd not eaten them yet.
I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, after work Philip and another member of staff had to get Visas to visit India, and to I tagged along for the ride. On the way there and back I got to see the Emporer's Palace, which I thought I'd miss on this trip as it's not near where I'm staying.

Here you go:

To be honest, there's not much to see because he still lives there and the whole area is surrounded by a moat and is out of bounds. Some areas inside the moat have been set aside to museums and such, but the actual palace is out of sight from all angles I believe.

From there we headed back towards the hotel, but instead went off the beaten track to a proper Japanese restaurant. When I say off the beaten track, I mean :

No westerners around, no credit cards, and that bit on the left is under the railway, so when we were in the restaurant, the place shook when the trains went over.

The place we went to (picture to follow! Damn this blogger!) served chicken on skewers. It was a TINY place. We sat on little seats right in front of the charcole burner where they cooked it.

Philip assured me it would only be chicken on the skewers but said it in a way that made me suspicious.

He wasn't lying, but it was various parts of the chicken.

Breast - you know what this is like, don't worry - it was like that, only on skewers and in Japan.

Tail - tastes like bacon - apparently there's more fat in it and the carcole smokes this, it was nice.

Skin - tasted like the skin off a roast chicken. Nice, but I was getting concerned for my heart at this point

Chicken heart halves - these were actually OK, but didn't work for me because they're, like, organs ffs.

Chicken livers - not nice. I don't like liver. Although, that said, this would be the nicest liver I've had. Still not my cup of tea though. Philip said it wasn't up to their normal standard.

Knees - yes, knees. Chargrilled knees. In fact, these weren't bad, but again the western conditioning meant that I'm not allowed to like it.

There were also some non-skewered dishes. The first was raw chicken liver. This was actually very nice. Shocking I know. But still...

Then (and I'm getting hazy here) we had beef intestine. I wouldn't seek this out to be honest. Edible, but not wonderful. It was in a broth with onions and tofu.

And finally (look away Red Rum lovers) raw horse meat. This actually looked like the steak from the previous restaurant, but they didn't cook it. Not bad at all, but I'd have preferred it grilled!

There was other stuff, including raw ginger, which was nice, and lots of sauces to dip all of the above in. All served in the smallest place I've ever seen with the whole building shaking in time with the trains.

I've got to say that I owe a lot to Philp, because there's not a chance in hell I would have ever experienced this without him being there. There were no other westerners in sight, no English written or spoken anywhere and no credit cards accepted.

I feel like I've seen my own little corner of Japan. And eaten chicken knees as well.

Which is nice.