Onomichi - Temple Walk, Beef Tongue and Poisonous Okoze Fish

This understatedly photogenic town was our favorite day-trip from our 3-night stay at Kurashiki. An excellent lunch -- in fact two of our favorite lunch entrees in one meal -- has a lot to do with it, but it's also a beloved playground of photographers wielding anything from serious DSLRs to cellphones.



It's easier to be photogenic when you've got a distinguished, indisputable landmark. Okayama has its world famous garden; Bitchu-Takahashi boasts the highest of Japanese mountain castles. But those are the kind of luxury that humble Onomichi lacks.



One could argue that Onomichi is blessed with a variety of little attractions, or that it has no quintessential sight. If you trust its official tourism website, the most popular spot would be Senkoji Park and its sweeping panorama of the Seto Inland Sea. But if you ask anyone who has gotten lost among Onomichi's entanglement of steep alleys, the town's inner charm runs so much deeper.



Onomichi can represent vastly different things to different people -- literary greats to most Japanese, serene temples to most foreigners, starting point of the 60km Shimanami Kaido to cyclists, Showa-era cinema to film bluffs, and Maneki Neko to cat lovers. And we would form our own opinion by the end of our day.



To properly understand Onomichi, a good starting point is the city's 2015 induction into Japan Heritage, which described it as "the city of miniature landscape, woven together by the Onomichi waterway since the Middle Ages." Yes, miniature landscape, or Hakoniwa in the induction script. Clear as mud?



The cryptic portrayal would become clearer from a bird's eye view from the cable car, where Onomichi would take on a Hakoniwa-like appearance, boxed-in by steep green hills on both sides of the busy waterway, barely two minutes across by ferry. With a narrow city centre only 300m wide and 2km in length, it's ideal for a day-hike from one end to the other, slowly savoring its rambling little alleys on foot.



For day-trippers staying at Okayama or Kurashiki like ourselves, the easiest way to access Onomichi is to buy a Kibi-no-Kuni Odekake Pass, which offers, among other perks, unlimited JR train rides between Okayama and Onomichi for 1950 yen. Bus Stop #1 in front of Onomichi Station has buses departing for the Jodoji-shita bus stop, the starting point of our self-guided walking tour.



The first half of our hike loosely followed Onomichi's famous Temple Walk, a meandering route linking 23 large and small temples over a few short kilometres, starting at the outlying Kairyuji and returning to Onomichi Station at the end. Our 5-minute bus ride took us to Jodoji-shita where this steep flight of stairs lined with Buddhist banners showed the way towards Kairyuji and Jodoji.



The Temple Walk kicks off with a bang at its eastern starting point with a designated National Treasure, the 700-year-old pagoda and main hall of Jodoji. The other National Treasure along the route would come at the very end at Jikoji.



After Jodoji the zigzagging path would continue northwest, passing several smaller temples before taking a sharp detour up the steep stairs of Mount Saikokuji where three more temples await beyond the Edo-era gate and its giant straw sandals.



While the trail to Saikokuji's 3-storey pagoda was closed due to landslides on this day, the trio of temples did provide nice views of Onomichi from the mid-mountain level. After the Saikokuji turnoff the Temple Walk would continue west towards Tenneiji, but we had to take a short diversion from the trail. It was time for lunch.



Fittingly situated next to the shoreline was one of the most respected seafood specialists in town, an Onomichi institution dating back to Year 1915 with a narrow focus on one particular species of local fish. With only 14 seats, we took no chances and reserved our table by email two weeks prior.


Food Review: AOYAGI (Onomichi)
Address: Tsuchidou 2-8-15, Onomichi-shi, Hiroshima Prefecture
Hours: 11:30-14:00 17:00-21:30, Closed on Wednesdays
Map: from Google Maps
Directions: From the train station, walk east along the seaside promenade for about 800m to Hiroshima Bank. Aoyagi is diagonally across from the bank, on the right side on the road.


This was one of the three best lunches of our 16-day trip, served by this tiny eatery with an inconspicuous exterior that belied its 100-year-old history as a local legend.

Like most historic restaurants in Japan, Aoyagi concentrates its effort on one or two time-honoured dishes that it does better than anyone else: a century-old recipe for stewed beef tongue, and poisonous Okoze fish -- one of the most dangerous ingredients in the Japanese chef's repertoire -- prepared in Karaage style.



Not to be confused with poisonous Fugu, the Okoze is an alien-looking fish with harmless white meat but a row of deadly venomous dorsal spines. It's never the diner who gets poisoned (as in the case of Fugu), but the chef himself who braves the grave hazard of losing his hand -- or his life in extreme cases -- to one of the most dangerous toxins known to man.

With such critical demand on the chef's skills, Okoze has always been an exclusive ingredient served only at higher-end restaurants. Just 500m down the street from Aoyagi, the venerable Ryokan Uonobu offers Okoze Karaage and Sashimi meals from 5400 yen to 9000 yen (CAD$64 to $106), which makes Aoyagi's Okoze Karaage Teishoku a relative bargain at 2100 yen (CAD$25). And if you have no desire for anything poisonous on your plate, lunches start from the incredible price of 980 yen (CAD$12) -- now THAT is really cheap for a restaurant of this class.



But Okoze is just half of Aoyagi's fame. Equally famous is the Japanese-French fusion of slow-stewed Beef Tongue in Demi-glace, a 100-year-old recipe passed down from the eatery's early day as a Yoshoku-ya during Emperor Taisho's reign. While the thick slices of beef tongue turned out surprisingly soft and supple, the real magic was the sharp acidity in the rich demi-glace that perfectly balanced the tongue's oiliness. This was by far the best beef tongue either of us have ever had, of any culinary tradition.



Like the excellent Tongue Stew Teishoku, the Okoze Karaage Teishoku also came with a Shiro-Miso soup, Tsukemono and three wonderful Kuchitori appetizers, of which the Mozuku seaweed with Wasabi and the Okara-based salad were particularly enjoyable. Even the simple Shiro-Miso came with a deep Umami derivable only from top quality Katsuobushi. Everything had set the stage for the star entree.



Poisonous Okoze, or stonefish, painstakingly de-spined, dipped in Aoyagi's century-old marinade and crusted with a granular coat of Kudzu starch. The result was an intensely crispy batter that enclosed the succulent, mildly sweet fillets on either side of the surgically removed spine. The smaller fins and tail of the fish were purposely retained and deep-fried to an edible deep crunch that went perfectly with the sweet-and-sour Ponzu dipping provided. I'm not sure if we like the Okoze better than the Beef Tongue -- both were among the most memorable dishes of our trip.



It gets even better. Did I mention that for an extra 700 yen (CAD$8), Chef Aoyama would turn your plain rice into Sea Urchin on Rice? Now that was just the perfect ending to an already fantastic meal. With such premier ingredients and impeccable preparations at the heart of Onomichi for less than 2500 yen per person, we could not have asked for anything more.

Bill for Two Persons

Okoze Karaage Teishoku	2100 yen
Substitute Uni Meshi for Plain Rice	700 yen
Tongue Stew Teishoku	1900 yen
TOTAL	4700 yen (CAD$55)

After a full lunch we rejoined the Temple Walk circuit, taking the cable car up to Senkoji Park for that obligatory panorama of Onomichi's waterway and the series of island-hopping bridges that link Japan's main island with Shikoku. Beneath the 1200-year-old Senkoji the path would split into two -- a flight of precariously steep stairs leading directly to Tenneiji, or an unmarked left path that led to ...



... the famous Neko-no-Hosomichi, or Path of Cats. There was hardly any signage to denote where the path began or ended, only a colourful collection of cat-shaped stone talismans scattered along the way and a make-shift museum dedicated to all things Maneki Neko. Felines were vastly outnumbered by human visitors though, as we came across only one resident cat on this drizzly day.



After Tenneiji we decided to skip the rest of the temples and spent our late afternoon at what may be Onomichi's most under-appreciated sight, a West-Japan-style covered arcade where time seemed to have stopped in the 1960s. Prices were remarkably cheaper compared with Kansai: 1500 yen for a hand-dyed Noren curtain, 650 for a pack of peony grapes and 130 for a hand-fried Senbei cracker with an entire small fish or octopus inside.



To me this is exactly the nostalgic allure of Onomichi, a former seafaring boomtown with a Showa-era towncentre that has been slowly decaying in this age of shrinking populations. The pictured Ueda Toy Store is no longer a toy store, but an anonymous little shop selling locally-made pottery and other household goods.



But there is hope. Bucking the trend is the quaint Anago-no-Nedoko Guesthouse, an antique Machiya residence converted into a modern youth hostel by a non-profit organization aiming to revive Onomichi's historic core, similar in mission to Kurashiki's Machiya Trust. I truly hope that they will be successful in refilling Old Onomichi's increasingly vacant traditional houses.



That evening we returned to our own rented Machiya in Kurashiki, savoring these curious Senbei crackers from Onomichi's arcade. As it turned out our lasting impression of Onomichi wasn't so much the temples or Showa-era cinema or Maneki Neko, but a tiny inconspicuous eatery that served up some of our trip's most memorable dishes -- Poisonous Japanese Okoze, and French Beef Tongue Demi-glace.

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