Tim’s Ramblings

I’m too exhausted to do a picture update of either the conference I’m attending at Tokyo Big Sight or the band I saw outside of Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara all the way back on Sunday… For the past 2 days I have been on my feet all day from when I leave the hotel at 8:15 until I get back around 6:45…. My feet are KILLING me…

Anyway, dinner. Yes. The bane of all business travellers who travel alone. Everyone can bet pretty tired and bored eating out alone every single day. But you get used to it after a while. This is also easier to do here in Japan. Maybe it’s just as easy in the US in the big cities too but I’m not sure really since…well…I really haven’t done too much of that.

I’ve written about it before but here, most restaurants are very “single party” friendly. They will either have a counter seat or smaller tables and, as this is a city where people eat out often, there are plenty of other lone diners so you’re just one of the crowd.

Of course, the key is to find places that you feel comfortable in along with having good food. There are certain places that you just can’t go alone…those include the “yakiniku” places where you cook your own meat as those are places that you go with at least one other person as it’s a social event. But that’s where the ramen shops, the sushi shops, and diners (or what passes for diners) here. And I’d like to introduce you to one of these places today.

This is a favorite of 淳子さん and it’s a place called Ootoya (the “oo” is pronounced like a long “o” and not like “cook”…more like “oh”). It’s a really nice clean bright restaurant with a very large menu (http://www.ootoya.com/index.html). The meals are mostly traditionally Japanese with some nice desserts and some western dishes mixed in for good measure. The portions are very ample, the dishes are delicious, and the service is fast. The one near the hotel (about a 6 to 8 minute walk) has a very large table in the middle of the restaurant where you can sit if you are there by yourself. Plenty of room for each person and the table is large enough to stretch your legs out without bothering anyone. Nice place to take a book and relax a bit while your food is being prepared.

However, after saying all this…there is one thing that makes this so popular amongst everyone from giggling HS girls to weary middle age office workers…the price. It’s so cheap it’s unbelievable. Case in point. Tonight I had an “Ichiyaboshi sumibiyaki toro aji no hiraki teishoku” (一夜干し炭火焼きトロあじの開き定食) otherwise translated in English as “Charbroiled dried overnight fatty horse mackerel dinner combination”. Yeah…it’s a long long name even in Japanese. All you really need to know is, it’s a very large horse mackerel that has been cleaned and opened down the middle dried in sea salt overnight then cooked over an open flame. It comes with some Japanese pickles, miso soup, a small small salad, grated daikon radish, and a bowl of rice. The rice comes with various toppings and I chose “jyako” which are very small cured fish.

Now. This dish along with all that comes with it and I ordered a large bowl of rice (extra 60 yen) and I also ordered a softdrink which was self serve and unlimited came out to a total of 995yen. At current exchange rate that’s only $8.34. That’s at a full service restaurant. Goddamn.

And it was gooood too. The fish was cooked perfectly with the meat nice and tender and slightly salty. Mmmmmmmmmm. I would go there every single night if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s always so crowded that there’s a big line. I got lucky tonight but less than 10 minutes after I got in there was a line. There’s nothing like a good meal that truly tastes home made in a nice restaurant with good service at an unbeatable price. Makes dinner alone while on a business trip that much less of a chore.

(^_^)

Oh…and for anyone that might travel to Tokyo alone, look this place up. It’s not very foreigner friendly as the menu is entirely in Japanese but, like a Denny’s menu, there is a picture for every single item in the menu so you can just point (^_^)