Will Miss #351 - WYSIWYG at restaurants

Click this small image for a bigger view of a lunch menu.
In America, there are two kinds of menus for the most part. There are those that display extremely unrealistic styled shots of food and those that have no pictures at all. The former is to make food look more appealing than it really is and the latter to avoid customer complaints (or even lawsuits) when people don't get what is shown in

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Will Miss #343 - lunch sets/deals

A fairly typical lunch set including salad, pickles, dessert, an entree, rice, and soup. This one went for a mere 650 yen ($7.94).
Eating out in Tokyo is expensive if you order dinner, but it can be both economical and awesome if you eat out at lunch time. Back home, I know that there were occasional lunch specials, but it's an art form with restaurants in Japan. You pay between 500-800 yen, and

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Won't Miss #338 - low protein (and veggie) meals

An extremely delicious Sri Lankan meal that I ate in Shinjuku with a tiny salad, 3 bites of chicken (with skin), rice, potato salad, and bread. Three carbs in one meal - great if you're running a marathon, or want to expand the size of your ass. Despite the carb overload, I heartily recommend this place - Court Lodge. The staff is wonderful (attentive, friendly,  offering more gravy as needed)

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Will Miss #327 - cat cafes

Tokyo has quite a few "cat cafes" in which patrons can go in and play with cats as well as have drinks and food. As someone who loves cats, but isn't allowed to have one in her apartment, this is a pretty nifty service. I'm not sure, but I believe it's also the kind of thing which would never be allowed back home because of concerns about cleanliness when animals are mixed with food preparation

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Won't Miss #301 - stingy drink service

Have you ever researched the cost of a fountain drink to a business? In some places, it costs mere pennies for enough syrup to make a few hundred glasses of Coke. While I'm sure that this is slightly more expensive in Japan (as many things are), it's not greatly more expensive, yet free refills are almost unheard of in most parts. Costco Japan's food court is a rare exception to the rule. I'm

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Will Miss #300 - tonkatsu

There is a type of cuisine in Japan called "yoshoku", which is influenced by Western cooking practices and was developed during the Meiji restoration in the 1800's in Japan. At that time, the emperor ended Japan's isolation and incorporated aspects of Western culture into Japanese life. One of the many results of that is tonkatsu, or pork cutlet. It is a piece of pork (or sometimes chicken)

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Won't Miss #287 - otoshi/tsukidashi

Cultural customs and habits are a reflection of a country's culture. Even small things like the custom of tipping in the United States tell you something about the priorities and expectations of the people. In the U.S., tipping is the way of empowering the customer and giving more control over the meal's expense (often at the expense of the servers). In Japan, the custom of "otoshi" or a "forced

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Will Miss #244 - automated ordering

A few buttons on a huge automated ordering machine. These are for curry and curry toppings.
Japan has long been famous for its technological innovations. Some day, I'm sure that they will be able to do away with people altogether in the service industry. Given that the birthrate is a bit under 1.4, they'll probably need to do this. For now though, they do the best they can to put technology into

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Will Miss #242 - Curry House Cocoichibanya

If you think Japanese food is healthy, then you don't know the guilty pleasures of Curry House Cocoichibanya. One of my favorite ways to eat myself into a carb stupor is to get a cheese curry bento with pari pari chicken (grilled crispy skin chicken) and garlic. The basic bentos are so huge though that I can only eat half. That's okay because then I can re-stupify the next day on the leftovers.

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Won't Miss #183 - close quarters in restaurants

Japanese people may not mind rubbing shoulders and bumping elbows with strangers while they slurp their soup, but I like my experience when I eat out to be comfortable. Because of the high cost of space in Tokyo, it's not the least bit uncommon for restaurants to place people almost on top of each other to maximize occupancy within a limited space. This sometimes means you barely can move your

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Won't Miss #164 - Horumon

In the past few years, horumon (ホルモン), or beef and pork offal (that's the stuff we throw away like guts and organs), restaurants have been popping up in more places in Japan. I'm guessing that part of the reason for this has been the sagging economy, but this cuisine has been around for a long time. I realize that there is nothing necessarily wrong with eating these things, and it's actually a

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Will Miss #160 - Doutor

There are a lot of coffee shop chains in Tokyo including Starbucks and Starbucks wannabes. Before the Seattle coffee invasion, there was Doutor. Frankly, I've rarely had their coffee (and thought it was just "okay" when I did have it), but I love their freshly made, somewhat elegant, warm and not gut-busting sandwiches. They used to have a chicken bagel sandwich which had a soft, toasted bagel

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