Shabu Shabu

One of our first traditional Japanese meals we ate was the first Saturday night we were in Japan at a shabu shabu place as a farewell dinner for Jenn and John, fellow Americans who were headed back to Texas. I don't know what shabu shabu means in Japanese, but it's delicious. They're similar to Taiwanese hot pots, but considerably better. There is a pot of boiling water in the middle of your table and endless plates of vegetables to go into it:




They have cabbage, leeks (so good), shitake mushrooms, glass noodles, and best of all, thinly sliced beef. Beef so thinly sliced you can see through it. You can hold it in the boiling water for about 10 seconds and it's fully cooked. Brenton-san the Australian claims you are only suppose to hold it in the water for as long as it takes you to say "shabu shabu." For rare-meat lovers that might be so, but I like my meat fully cooked:





Some of the shabu shabu crew:
Brooke, Jay, Jill, Kanoko, Kanoko's husband (?), Ayano, Naoko, and Brenton.




The Ball Family