Ramblings of a Former Gaijin: Restaurants

Living in Japan, heck just visiting Japan brings about quite a few changes. One of those changes I ran into was of course a change in diet. Out for the most part went a steady diet of burgers and pizzas and came a steady diet of fish, well chicken too. But... well... I mean we all need a break from the norm right? And that's where the usual every-so-often delight known as fast food comes in. Fast food in Japan is everything like it is here in America, it's just for the most part the food is different. I'll run down a few of the spots that I frequented in Nagoya.

Saizeriya:

It's likely hard to tell from the picture, but Saizeriya is a little chain of restaurants that "specialize" in "italian" food. Some people will give you an exaggerated expression that this is the shit that Japanese people think when they think grade-A italian food. Me? Well I don't think so. I'm certain that behind those plain store signs lie some very good italian places, Saizeriya? Well that ain't one. But being nestled right across the street from I-House and being open till atleast 2-3am made it the perfect place for a meal after some crazy drinking. Their big thing were pastas, pizzas, and hamburg steak. I suppose the direct American equivalent is simply Salisbury Steak, but they call it hamburg, note that I never called it hamburger. And the biggest draw? The place is cheap, I mean cheap. You could probably get a pizza, some pasta, drink bar, and desert for less than 12 dollars. But the pizza is small and thin, like if Donatos did a poor job at a personal pan pizza. The pasta is all the exquisite taste of Chef Boyardee. And the desert is never the tastiest. The best thing for me was always drink bar which were a bunch of beverages(non-alcoholic, not THAT kinda bar) that you could get, really it’s just a drink dispenser and some teas and coffee, but man it is tasty.

Ohgiya:

Ohgiya is really a bar, but it has tasty, tasty food and a really nice environment inside. Also being nestled right in front of I-House, it was a haven for ryuugakusei(exchange students) to drink and just shake off the stress of schooling in a foreign place. Their food is good and the drinks are varied and nice. It’s a small place, but a homely place, like if every place had a Cheers, this would be Nisshin’s. If you talk to the right people you could also schedule a Nomihoudai(ALL you can drink) for a relatively nice price, they’ll close the place for you and your people and you drink and eat away.

Yoshinoya:

These happen to be in California as well, but for those out of the loop, Yoshinoya sells what Japanese would truly call their own form of fast food. Kinda imagine those standing ramen stands and you get the gist of Japanese fast food. Yoshinoya doesn’t do ramen, they do however sell gyuudon or a beef and rice bowl. You get a pretty big bowl of it for a relatively cheap price an it’s made for quick eating(get it, fast food). It is delish, I wouldn’t lie to you, it is tasty and if you’re not looking for beef, they also do chicken, pork, and vegetables. The meal comes with miso soup and sometimes more rice and like you see on those price tags the stuff is cheap, like a three dollar bowl and you are good to go for some hours.

Freshness Burger:

Japan isn’t without their burger joints and this is one of the swankiest. Essentially, the idea behind Freshness Burger is that everything is well… fresh. And that brings about the drawback to the place if you are in a hurry. The food can take a while to get to you, but when you get it… oh man you are definitely in for a treat. Their biggest burger, the Dubba-Dubba(WW) Burger is a big beast and will fill you up. Everything taste fresh and tasty and they sell sweet potato fries, those are soooo good. This was my favorite burger joint, but it had to be a luxury because this place will set you back. It’s the most expensive out of the places I’ll be telling you about until I get to the fancier places a bit later. A couple of sandwiches, some fries, and a cola can put you back around 10 bucks so be wary, but it is delish. They also tend to lean to weirder burgers other than the standards, like the spam burger, and others.

MOS Burger:

Ahh the Burger King of Japan… well they have Burger King but you get what I mean. If Lotteria were Mickey D’s, The MOS is BK. The MOS in MOS Burger stands for Mountain Ocean Sun, why I don’t know. However one of the many MOS’ was situated on campus so of course I went there pretty regularly. The standard burger is the MOS Burger which is a regular, though small, burger topped with some sort of thick sauce that gets everywhere right after the first bite. Don’t know what the sauce is so don’t ask. There are other burgers as well, such as the Ebi(read shrimp) filet and the standard MOS Fish and MOS Chicken(really they’re just fish and chicken but that word is really fun to say in front of other things, try it out, you’ll like it.) And at our MOS was a little specialty item known as the MOS Chicken, it was a piece of chicken, not sure what part of a chicken it could come from, but it was flat, about the size of a thigh maybe, but with a leg bone like it was a drumstick… yeah don’t wrap your brain around it too much. The place is rather cheap and though they lack a dollar menu, the stuff is cheap enough not to be pissed about it.

Curry House CoCo Ichibanya:

This is the last one on this list and it’s the last for a reason. You the know the saying save the best blah blah blah yakity schmakity so I know you understand that this is without a doubt my most favorite restaurant in Japan, bordering on the entire world. Don’t let the pic fool you, that’s merely the first ever CoCo and I personally took the picture. There around 4 or so in America, all situated in Hawaii. Curry House CoCo Ichi is well a Curry House, meaning they specialize in curry. Now there happens to be a difference between Indian and Japanese curry and CoCo is here to blend those lines. Traditionally, Japanese Curry is sweet and chock full of veggies and meat, Indian thinner and hot. CoCo Ichi is much more like Indian, but with a Japanese taste and a katsu topping. You can choose how much rice to get, ranging from 150g to however many kilos you want, but the price will steepen greatly if you plan on jumping up past 1 kilo. Then you can choose your sauce, beef, pork, or veggie sauce, with the sauce you choose the spice level, from 0-10. 0 is traditional sweet Japanese curry, 10 is hot and I mean hot. It used to be a rule that you couldn’t have a 10 until you went through the rest of them, but I think that may have been too hard to implement without cards and official mumbo-jumbo. And then you choose your topping, they have a wide range of toppings, from fried chicken to squid or natto, or even eggs. My preferred meal is 400g of rice, pork sauce, pari-pari chicken, chicken katsu(fried chicken cutlet), and cheese mixed in usually a four of five level, but I’ve been to the zenith multiple times. It is Japanese fast food dining at it’s best and I recommend you find one if you ever go to Japan.