Tokyo & Kyoto, November 2007 : What We Ate, Part 1

Ordering food was an adventure in Japan; thank goodness for picture menus.

This was taken during our first meal in Tokyo.













I ordered fried rice and Mr K-E ordered a pork cutlet dish. When I say "ordered", what I mean is that we pointed at the menu and nodded a lot.

We also ordered some gyoza (the dumplings). The meal came with bowls of miso soup, which is pretty much standard for meal "sets".

You get iced water as soon as you sit down; one less thing for our jet-lagged brains to deal with.









The next day we ate here. This place was really cheap and fun.

While we were in Tokyo we stayed in Shinjuku. It is the red-light district (more about that later) but is full of places to eat.











First choose what you want from the plastic food display.

Yes! Yes! Plastic food, I love it!









Then pay for it at the ticket machine. It spits out a ticket which you take inside.

We had to remember the characters from the plastic food display because there were no English characters on the vending machine.
















You sit at the counter and give your ticket to the cooks. You can see our tickets in the photo.

They then cook your food and serve it up in a few minutes.









Fast food, Japanese stylie. Classic katsu don i.e. pork cutlets on rice with egg on top. Yummilicious.













We were a bit perplexed when we had to order from this menu.

Mysterious.















The friendly waitress helped us out so we didn't end up too badly...

I had eel on rice, which was one of the things I wanted to try in Japan. Mr K-E had teriyaki chicken.

You can also see miso soup, pickles and salad; which was part of the meal sets. All beautifully served.







We didn't have any of this.
















Or this.

















We also tried okonomiyaki; to compare it to the okonomiyaki we had in London.













It was good.

We had yakisoba (fried noodles) on the side.














And of course we had to try eating a meal Japanese style i.e. sitting on the floor. I was OK but Mr K-E said "I feel uncomfortable already" within 1 minute of sitting down, hahaha.












We cooked our food at the table in a light soup. Just like "steamboat" at home.












There was chicken, prawns, tofu, noodles, mushrooms, fishcakes etc. We were stuffed at the end of the meal.

Isn't it artistic the way the food has been arranged? That's my over-riding impression of Japanese food : even the humblest meals are beautifully served.