Manaita

Tsuguyasu Kida used to be an architect. When he retired, he decided to indulge his passion for food, built himself a restaurant and called it Manaita meaning chopping board. Built, as in, with his own bare hands. It's a small place; eight seats around the counter and another four at a small Japanese table. He cooks, a girl serves. Every morning he goes to Tzukiji market and comes back with whatever takes his fancy. Then he paints the daily menu on two sheets of A4, sellotapes them together, hangs them on the wall, and opens the door.

Manaita

A Japanese potato, liberally seasoned with sea salt and accompanied by a few cold edamame beans are the opening gambit. Simple, understated, delicious. Next, a small bowl of tiny raw white fish, long and thin, like broken strands of vermicelli with microscopic eyes. A dab of wasabi, add your own soy sauce. Fresh, clean and silky. Tofu next. In the bowl next to it, a raw egg yolk and chopped green onion. The soft, creamy texture of the tofu and the crisp acidity of the onion, tempered by the rich smoothness of the egg. Masterful.

Tsuguyasu with his spanner crab

An enormous oyster, adorned with a solitary blob of hot pepper sauce, follows. The crab is next. Spanner crab, a half each, its cavity filled with delicious white meat you normally find hidden in the darkest corners of the claw. In the course of any other meal, this would be the crowning glory, but the best has been kept to last. A white fish soup (something approximating cod, with firm meaty flakes, in a clear broth with cabbage and seaweed. It is the greatest rendition of the sea that has ever passed my lips. Pure, unadulterated ocean, right there in that bowl; the water that lapped the shores of Eden could not have tasted any finer.

Ocean in a bowl

A question of perspective

I seem to suffer these strange lulls when I stay in the same place for more than a few days. It happened in Buenos Aires, again in Texas and it's happening now in Tokyo.

Maybe it's staying in an apartment. Having a set of keys, going shopping, knowing your way home. Whenever I have stayed still for too long, I've got the feeling that I am somehow wasting time. That something, maybe me, is suffering.

Today I experienced a strange kind of nausea, at the train station. When you're travelling, everything new you have to try to make sense of, makes sense to someone. Not knowing where you are going, being unable to communicate, you just take your time and don't mind looking stupid as you attempt to work it out. Emerging from the underground into Shinjuku station is like being blindfolded, spun around in darkness and thrust into the centre of, well, Shinjuku station.

I'm looking for a particular bus terminal. I've got a guide book telling me where it is, and maps and signs everywhere. I think I know where I'm going, but a few twists and turns later and I'm losing my bearings along with my patience. I spend ten minutes trying to reconcile the map on the wall with the one in my hand, before I notice it is oriented east-west as opposed to north-south. I turn my head on its side, and things begin to make sense.

There was no sign of where I was meant to go, though there were signs for just about everything else. I resigned myself to the futility of my situation and, desperate for a new aspect, wandered north, or was it west, to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office, which has an observation deck on the 45th floor.

There's nothing like looking down on a city from a great height to put things in perspective, and I quickly begin to see through to the heart of my malaise. From each window I see the same thing: 35 million people in the largest metropolitan area in the world, stretching far beyond the horizon in every direction.

You can't take taxis in Tokyo; they're too expensive. You can't walk; it's too hot. You take the train or the subway. Which means traipsing through vast underground networks of tunnels, staircases and corridors. Fathoming exits and platforms, under the constant watch of endless vending machines and bizarre posters. And everywhere there are people. Millions and millions of them, all being squeezed through the same tiny aperture.

Rejuvenated and refreshed, I take the elevator back to the first floor and find the tourist information. With much smiling, they furnish me with a map, and I realise my guide book was wrong. I walk, happily now, to where I need to be, buy my tickets and ride the subway home, where I fall into a deep, tired sleep. When I wake up the bus tickets are next to me. In the morning they'll carry us out of here, to the countryside. I think not a day too soon.

A fishy business

The streets of Tokyo are pretty quiet at four o' clock in the morning. Just roadworks and taxi drivers, until I near my destination. Then suddenly, as if from nowhere, emerges a hive of crazed and staggering activity: Tsukiji. 60,000 people selling 2,000 tons of seafood a day; the biggest fish market in the world.

I'd arranged a guide to get me in beyond the usual tourist places. Unfortunately, he declined to wait beyond 4:04, thus doing himself out of 7,000 yen. Without him to take me behind the scenes, I had little option but to queue for the tuna auction, passing the time taking photos in the darkness.

Eventually the slightly oppressive guards usher us into the waiting area and issue fluorescent vests. They may as well give us bells to hang round out necks. We remain in this room for a good half an hour, which only serves to increase the sense that we are a) prisoners and b) about to suffer some horrific trauma.

No need to worry - the tuna auction itself is pretty crazy, but despite the menacing looking hooks being wielded, no-one gets hurt. The tuna are all frozen and glistening white, their tails already hacked off and an incision made enabling the buyers to inspect the quality of the meat. There is much milling around and perusal of fish; careful scrutiny of the flesh, prodding with hooks and silent consideration. Everyone knows everyone else; they chat and joke, but keep their opinions to themselves.

Eventually a bell is frantically sounded, the auctioneer climbs atop a small box and the business begins. I've been to plenty of bloodstock auctions in my time, and watched Bargain Hunt on TV, but what follows is slightly different. The quiet looking auctioneer shouts faster than the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. I'm watching for bidders, but they are almost impossible to detect; only a quick scribble after the fact betrays the purchase. Another guy paints a name on the fish itself, which is then hooked and hurriedly removed. As the auction progresses across the room, more guys come on with barrows and trolleys and set about removing the tuna to be sawn into manageable chunks.

The whole thing is over in a flash, and we are rudely bundled out of the room, stripped of our orange vests and left to fend for ourselves, in daylight, mercifully, in the insane world outside the door. The market men have swapped the bikes they rode in on for little motorised carts that whizz in and out of one another. There are millions of them; how they don't crash into one another, and everyone else, is a mystery. Huge mountains of polystyrene boxes line the road. Everyone is doing something.

It's just gone 6am, which means time for breakfast. I pull up a chair at Sushibun, that's been here for 160 years. The sushi is excellent, of course, hand pressed in front of you, but the miso soup with tiny clams is out of this world. Which is a relief, because it is obscenely expensive.

Visitors aren't supposed to enter the main market until after 9am, but I'm not about to wait around for two hours when I'm this tired. And besides, I have already decided that I don't feel comfortable wandering around taking photographs, so am going to keep the lens cap on. Instead, I'm going to do something that should make for a far better experience all round: I'm going shopping.

Once people realise you are actually going to buy something and have overcome the shock, they're very friendly. The prices are very reasonable compared to the outside, and the seafood unbeatably fresh. An afternoon in the kitchen later and the day ends with a meal of tuna sashimi, scallops in mirin on sake soaked edamame beans, calamaretti with shiso oil, marinaded salmon with sansho pepper and Japanese potato salad. All of which makes waking up at 3.30am seem almost worthwhile, though I'd rather not do it every day...

A walk in the park

It doesn't matter where you go in the world, Sunday afternoons are always best spent down the park.

The first thing we see on our way into Yoyogi park in Tokyo is some kind of rockabilly dance off. The natural gaiety of this hilarious scene is tempered slightly by the suspicious looking yakuzu tattoos, and the bottles of Jack Daniels they're chugging down, but it's still pretty funny. They must be sweating their nuts off.

Things become a little more civilised further into the park. There are people everywhere. Some guys blow giant bubbles, and we sit for a while watching the sheer joy on the faces of the children as they chase and burst their beautiful shapes.

In between these two extremes comes everything else; lovers relax in the shade, families play simple games. Pretty much everyone seems to be drinking. People are playing baseball, badminton, frisbee. Huge groups rehearse dance routines, chant, or do strange martial art drills. Everyone is enjoying themselves openly, unashamedly and in their own distinct ways. It's the human side of the big, busy city.

It doesn't feel so different to London. Pop down Victoria Park on a summer Sunday and it's a similar thing. Well, almost. You probably won't see too many of the local hardnuts throwing shapes at the entrance to London Fields, and somehow that slightly priggish, reserved Englishness will manage to shine through alongside the occasional ray of sun. But it's still Sunday, and the easy air of gentle relaxation, sympathetically imbued with a slow but steady stream of alcohol does just enough to anaesthetise any thoughts of Monday morning.