A good day starts with wonderful breakfast, the common sense around the world, I think.

If you come visit to Tokyo or Yokohama, it’s worth having a little train trip to Kamakura for breakfast. I mean, just for breakfast. That’s what I thought after spending time at “Breakfast Kishin”.

Kamakura, one of the most famous historical cities in Japan, has so many places to visit. You can start your day at “Breakfast Kishin Kamakura” and that would give you a chance to eat Kamakura vegetables. Kamakura vegetables are known as “Kamakura Yasai(vegetable)” recently. They are cultivated at the local farmers and are served at high-end restaurants in these days. Also they are rich in flavor and are low in chemicals.

“Breakfast Kishin” serves you those vegetables in a variety of plates, such as tsukemono(Japanese pickles), miso-soup, and appetizer. When my wife and I visited to them, they served a whole tomato stewed in dashi(broth) as appetizer. Stewing a tomato in dashi brought its natural sweetness. You really notice how sweet a tomato is.

If you have a seat at the kitchen side, you can see how rice is cooked in donabe(ceramic rice cooker). You may never see donabe if you’re from western culture. It is a traditional rice cooker that enables to extract rich taste of rice. Donabe is not for only professionals, but also for who like to cook nowadays. I’m one of those donabe users at home.

It takes like 10 minutes or something until rice is cooked, and then a china cup of rice, tsukemono, miso-soup will be served. They had three choices of miso-soup, depends on what they got for a day, and I chose a radish miso-soup. This radish is Kamakura vege, they said. They told me an interesting tale regards to Kamakura radish.

Once upon a time, there was a fishermen, named Genjuro Yajuro. He saved a life of a little fox that was attacked by a dog. The fox gave him seeds of radish for saving life and asked him to plant those at Sasuke-gayatsu. He planted the seed as told, and when radish was ready to be cultivated, there was disease that nobody can cure at that time. All of sudden, people heard that Genjuro’s radish was the only medication for the disease as God’s omen. Then Genjuro became rich. He then built a shrine as a way to acknowledge the fox. That shrine remains there, Sasuke Inari Shrine.

I’ve known about Kamakura vegetables, but never heard of anything like that story.

“Breakfast Kishin” also served us a roasted Spanish mackerel. It was actually wrapped in a bamboo sheath so that its scent was soaked into fish. Delicious one!

At last, some pieces of okoge(scorched rice at the bottom of donabe) was served. You can enjoy its crunchy texture then.

These are the basic breakfast menu there. You can have some additional dishes like a fresh raw egg, Kamakura sausage, etc. By the way, they served us hot black bean tea, and it had refreshing taste. I really liked it.

So when you have a plan to visit Kamakura, just take a walk from the station for about 10 minutes or so. It is worth. Also you will know what Japanese breakfast really is. Only my suggestion though.  They also have a branch in Kyoto!

by for now.

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