GD03, Day One, Dinner
According to ChowHound, Saito's is a good, consistent Japanese restaurant in Seattle. So I decided to try it. Around the corner of 2nd and Bell, it is but an at-most-20-minutes walk to the restaurant.

I arrived, and promptly asked for a seat at the sushi bar. I think Saito-san was around, but it was a junior sushi chef that greeted me at the bar. I cracked opened the menu, and ordered a sashimi dinner, an order each of o toro and amaebi, a la carte.

I give the sashimi dish an 85. The octopus is quite good, while the hamachi was very good. Both weren't all cooked and vinegared to death.. And the latter was quite fragrant and the oils spread in mouth even if I just put it on tongue.
The red clams are also very good.. I don't think I have had these clams fresh.. I always had them frozen. In fact many of the fishes on that dish are good. Even the daikon was cut extremely thin (indicating that whoever made it had very good knife skills.) The only bad thing was that there were 2 scales on one piece of the fish, which I thought was the weirdest.

The amaebi nigiri sushi was very good. Mind you this wasn't the smallish shrimp that I was used to, but in fact I got two relatively large shrimps! Whereas the body was served raw on the sushi (yummy, and seriously fragrant with the sweetness of shrimp throughout), the heads of the shrimps were deep fried tempura-style. That way, I get to enjoy the heads too -- the fat and some of the shrimp meat are tasty there.

The otoro was also very good.. as in, fatty, melt-in-your-mouth good. It was of a seriously pale-pink colour, and for around $10 USD, I got two large pieces of otoro, nigiri-sushi style. It was a bit sinewy, but that's ok.

Suffice to say, I left the place a happy guy. 2 out of 3 done! (Oysters is left)