Scenes from our kaiseki encounters: We're in Japan, and we're staring at the delicacy at the end of our chopsticks: blood-red sheets of horse sashimi. We psych up and eat.

Still in Japan, a summer splurge: Our waitress kneels at our table in her kimono, holding out a bamboo tube. "Will this do?" she asks, and slides back the top: an ayu river fish swims inside. It comes back minutes later, salty-grilled.

That's how we learn the elements of kaiseki — seasonal, always; ultra-fresh, because you can't fool the Japanese palate; regional, and possibly given to the unexpected. Kaiseki is the ultimate. It aims for perfection in taste, texture, seasonality, preparation and beauty, progressing from one course to the next with studied consideration.

Kaiseki we've had in Hawai'i? There's not much, and it's all over the map, from totally traditional to Hiroshi Fukui's fusion creations with tons of local ingredients.

Yuzen is a newbie in the heart of Ke'eaumoku. Things we know about chef Edgar San Juan: He was born in the Philippines and trained in Japan in kaiseki and ikizukuri, the art of filleting live seafood. We know his izakaya-style dishes stay mostly within traditional bounds. And we know this is his first kaiseki as head chef of his own restaurant.

Of Yuzen's two kaiseki menus, the Yuzen Kaiseki lists nine courses ($50) and the Chef's Kaiseki lists seven ($45), making them a good value. That's 16 dishes between two people, and with chopsticks crisscrossing the table and bottles of cold beer poured back and forth, the two menus begin to blur as we move from clean and raw to brothy-steamed to a rich broil to sweet and fresh to salty-fried.

Highlights:

• Zensai: The four-morsel starter sets up what's to come on both menus. Tamagoyaki egg roll with unagi in the middle: light and sweet. A lone smelt, fried in light batter and trailing slivers of onions: vinegary-sweet. Okinawan sweet potato kanten with a rim of pumpkin: earthy but a little dry. Slices of raw salmon: melty-fresh and bathed in a nutty miso. Hello, chef! Can you put this on the regular menu?

• King crab onigarayaki: Three legs, split open, brushed with a sauce of homemade mayo and San Juan's light shoyu-mirin, which just caramelizes under a salamander. Makes us groan with pleasure.

• Junsaizu: A palate cleanser in a cocktail glass. Take it like a shot if you can — it's vinegary tart, with crunchy, slimy bits of a seasonal water grass. Definite shock effect that wakes up your tongue.

• Creamy wagarashi seafood medley: Chef's choice of sashimi, arrayed on a mix of tangy, sweet and sharp salad greens, topped with a slightly mustardy sweet dressing and served in a martini glass. Simple, effective combinations, squid so fresh it's like candy, and a presentation that literally elevates the dish.

• Scallops shisomaki tempura: A letdown on our first visit, winner the second time. The tempura frying had left the scallops gummy inside their shiso wrap, and they were too big for the green-tea salt sprinkled on top to add the right balance of flavor. Our second visit, the scallops are smaller and have been flash-scorched to a crisp under the salamander. Potato-chippy on the outside, soft and sweet inside.

• New York steak tataki with ponzu: Think lean beef sashimi, sliced paper-thin and served chilled with ribbony raw onions and a ponzu dip. The cleanest beef presentation we've had. We feel like we're breathing in the cow.

While both menus heavily favor seafood, the Yuzen Kaiseki offers bite-size morsels raw, marinated, grilled or fried in six of its nine courses. The Chef's Kaiseki is more varied, balancing the seafood with dishes of simmered vegetables and beef; and while it's shorter on the eyes, its rice course is a seven-piece sushi platter. Dessert for both is light and happy: an arrangement of ice cream (we ask for the coconuty Okinawan sweet potato instead of vanilla), a pillowy pink sakura mochi, azuki and glassy kanten.

If you press us to choose, the crab and wagarashi seafood especially, and pretty much everything else on the Yuzen Kaiseki menu, hits memorable territory — even the anemone-like daikon pickle San Juan makes with a hint of chili — for their pure simplicity and variety. The shrimp and snapper tempura on the chef's menu have problems with texture and greasiness, but that's hardly a menu killer.

Our tasting partner feels fished-out. And distracted by all the other dishes we've ordered on the side — aside from kaiseki, Yuzen has a sushi bar, full dinners, teppanyaki and shabu shabu. She really wanted to just let San Juan's own orchestrated progression speak to her.

But us, we can never get enough seafood, and that's where we detect San Juan's voice. When we met before, he was shy and let his wife Yuko do the talking: about how San Juan became captivated with kaiseki, about living in Kamakura and training in the old way, starting at the bottom making lunch deliveries and over the years working up to kaiseki and ikizukuri.

On the night of our kaiseki, San Juan talks about different fish and their seasons, of following the kaiseki chef he called master, and how the master taught him as a final step to always stand back, look, adjust the angle of a garnish if it was off.

Seafood, sauces, presentation, all simple and light: that's his voice. Kaiseki in the strictest traditional sense? Not quite. We wish we could see a little more of the season, a little more sense of place. What we do see of Yuzen's style, we like.