Fortunately or not, my family were in Tokyo over the weekend. Before I left for Japan, I was dreading it - was it too soon after I had arrived? Would they disrupt my other activities?
As it turns out, I really enjoyed spending time with them. Having my family around just when everything seemed overwhelming was very welcome as they provided familiar faces and comfort. Thanks for coming guys!

One of the highlights of their stay was our visit to the sushi restaurant, Sushi-zen. This restaurant was one outlet of a branch of famous restaurants originating in the northern island of Hokkaido. As this particular restaurant was located on the 46th floor of the massive Caretta building in Shiodome, there was no way we could have discovered it on our own. In fact, it was recommended to us by an avid Primo Estate fan who grew up in Tokyo - thanks!

The building's logo:

The turtle motif continued to the awesome water feature in the courtyard by the bottom of the tower:


Riding the glass elevator some 46 stories up to the restaurant was a somewhat unnerving experience - but the view it gave us was majestic. I didn't take a photo at the time, but here's a photo of the Tokyo sunset from my family's hotel room to give you an idea (sorry about the glare - it was taken through glass):


Once in the restaurant, we were ushered into a small room which consisted of a small kitchen and adjoining bar. This is what we had come all this way for - to see a sushi master at work!
We were to have one chef looking after us exclusively for the entire night, and luckily for us our chef, whose name escapes me at the moment, spoke some English.
What followed was an evening that will surely go on to be one of the highlights of my life (I won't say it will never happen again, because I'm an optimist ^__^). The chef carefully prepared everything fresh by hand, serving up his favourite courses of sashimi and sushi, carefully one after the other. Everything was done at a relaxed pace, but each mouthful was simply sublime, so it was worth the wait.

A somewhat dodgy photo of the kitchen and settings:


Crab meat. This started off as an entire crab - the chef carefully and time consumingly extracted all of the flesh from the crab and split it into five serves. I wish I had taken a photo of the crab while it was still whole - it was quite imposing!