I love my GPS …

First of all, I managed to drive down to Nagoya University to pick up some items that I’d bought at a sayonara sale. I found the coordinates online, plugged them into the GPS and off we went. Tanya (colleague) and I managed to stuff all my purchases in the car. She even had to carry some things on her lap. I had to keep reminding myself that looking at the rear view mirror was a futile attempt to see anything behind the car. But I digress, that’s not the story of the evening.

The real highlight happened on the way home. As we were driving down some street in a ward in Nagoya (I’m sure that there were signs but I have no idea what they said although some might even have been in English) we noticed quite a few restaurants. While at a red stoplight – see I’m a safe GPS user – I saved the location as food street. Tanya, Charlotte (side kicks) and I decided to check out food street last night. I parked on the street and we walked around to find a restaurant. We first went in search of a Spanish restaurant that was advertised on a billboard. We walked past it two times before we noticed it on our third pass; it was closed. We then went to a French restaurant but it was a bakery. Finally, we went to a Japanese restaurant (you might argue that we should have done this in the first place since we’re in Japan …).

As you enter the restaurant, there is a wall of lockers for storing your shoes. You lock your key in the locker before heading to a table. The tables are just slightly above the floor level in a sunken part of the floor so that you are actually sitting on chairs. Imagine a square pool just big enough for a table and two benches with the table just protruding over the edge of the pool.

The food was wonderful. Even better, ordering was not a guessing game (as much as we have fun pointing to random things on the menu and asking for ebi) because our waiter spoke English! In fact, we had three waiters and two of them spoke to us in English. We spent most time talking to the one in the pictures below; he’d been to Canada and had done a working holiday in Australia. He was very nice and helpful(and tipping isn’t even done in this country). I had unagi (eel), shrimp rice balls (I’m sure that there’s a more elegant name), and cucumber slides. My friends had the shrimp rice balls and chicken wings and squid (apparently a Nagoya special). We ended our meals with the flavored ice dessert (flavor poured onto ice).

The restaurant was atmospheric. We noticed quite a few people come in around 9. We guess that it was Japanese business people (mostly men) out after a long day at work.

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