Riding the subway to Shibuya - making my through the Shinjuku subway station - riding a wave of well dressed Japanese people toward ticket machines that take some grit decipher…Not knowing how to read most Japanese has proved itself to be one of the greatest challenges and frustrations of being here. Most local restaurants have menus written on the walls that make great use of kanji, and like a deer in the headlights I just ask for whatever the chef recommends…
Kristin Namimoto wears a bib while eating curry udon. I still haven’t mastered the art of tactfully and neatly slurping noodles. Incredible!
Lunch set, at the top of a department store in Shinjuku.
Pickles!
Grilled meats (yakitori)!
Immediately we began eating lots of the most amazing sashimi ever tasted (and compared to what you pay for it in CA, its pretty cheap!). Shinjuku was full of huge department stores that are like no department store you have ever been to. In Japan, the basement floor of a department store is an amazing grocery store and take away foods, the middle floors are the usual shopping, and the top floors are really great restaurants of an amazing variety!
We stayed in a ritzy hotel in Shinjuku (an infamous neighborhood of Tokyo) which looks like many variations of this.
