Aoki - Counter seats this time

After my virgin experience in 2010, I've somehow ended up going to Aoki quite a number of times over the past 2 months for various reasons - farewell lunches, welcome back lunches, and a couple of need-to-get-away-from-the-office lunches. The first time I had a counter seat was earlier this year, and I think a counter seat at Aoki is pretty different from other sushi counters where you can actually see what is going on instead of staring at a display case.
The entree was lotus root this time.
And we didn't get to see this in the private room. I wonder how they refrigerate this box.
Where all the treasures are kept.

The little bits of fish all being sliced up.
It was interesting to see that perfectly good pieces of fish, instead of the offcuts, were used for the mazechirashi, when other places might have kept their best for sashimi. I'm sure we were given the uglier bits but they weren't that ugly to begin with.
The salad looking colourful and pretty in a blue ceramic bowl
PicklesThe mazechirashi again. I've learnt to appreciate the slices of what I think are ginger flower, and I've also learnt the right way of using the soy sauce on the fish since coming back from Tokyo! (I didn't know then, for this Aoki lunch, and would have looked rather suaku at the counter :-O).
I had to take a photo of these very fatty looking otoro pieces - this is the sort of good stuff that goes into the bowl. Somehow it's a lovely combination of everything, with the cucumbers giving the crunch, the ikura giving that amazingly salty bubble-like-liquid-oozing-out texture and the tamago also helping to offset the salty flavours with the sweetness and springyness.
Dessert was sorbet, melt-in-your-mouth mochi and melt-in-your-mouth umeshu jelly.
It gets my vote for the best $45 that anyone could spend on lunch in Singapore.