Today is my wonderful husband's birthday. However, we celebrated this last Saturday. We went to this new izakaiya (Japanese pub) for dinner. When we told the host that we wanted to eat there, he went on to explain that there we no pictures on menu and asked us if this was ok. I laughed a little inside because this is just another example of how different our new world can be. Nobody would ever, possibly, turn costumers away because they can't read the menu, nor ask them if they can read the menu.
Anyway, we preceded to eat there. I was pleasantly surprised at myself, though, and the amount of the menu I could read since it mostly consisted of kanji. Plus, you learn to be adventurous with food. Sometimes we like to just point and order things that we clearly don't know. All of our food turned out pretty good. We also did the two hour nomihodai (all-you-can-drink), which is always a steal. In a country that is pretty expensive, drinking is actually a pretty cheap thing to do. Most bars/restaurants have nomihodai for 1.5-2 hours at a cost of around $20. Crazy!
After the restaurant we went to a "Snack Bar". Most snack bars in Japan are small bars, usually with karaoke, and women who wait on you hand a foot. We walk it and they bring the choice of whiskey or shochu. We go with the shochu and orange juice. So, they bring a new bottle of shochu, orange soda, a bucket of ice, and two glasses to our table and anytime our drink was less than half empty, someone was there to fill it up. Even though I enjoyed the attention, I think that bar is usually geared toward lonely business men, not a young foreign couple. They really enjoyed us though, and kept encouraging us to sing. I could help but think, "when in Rome".
All in all it was a good night, but now we are back to work and preparing for Halloween this weekend. This year, we'll even get to make it to the annual Halloween party in Asahikawa!
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