First off, Happy Birthday to Kosuke today. He's old. He may die soon.
ok, ok, enough of that now. back to our regularly scheduled program:
So, there's all kinds of foreign aspects to Japan, but we'll start with the food. It really is an adventure in and of itself.
Several restaurants make you pre-purchase tickets for your meal. This is apparently to cut down on the timeless 'dine and dash.' So, you go to a vending machine to buy your ticket, and trade that for food at the counter. It's odd, but if the vending machines have pictures (some do), it makes the whole experience a lot easier for a foriegner.
For lunch today we had ramen. yes, ramen. it's kind of a big
deal here, and rightfully so - it's a hell of a lot better than what we get freeze-dried at kroger (or albertson's, or safeway, or giant eagle, or marsh, or where ever you may shop. IGA, perhaps.).We also enjoyed soy flavored treats, as well as green tea ice cream while walking Kyoto, and finished up at a japanese restaurant.
Kosuke's friends took care of the ordering, which was good because the menu was entirely unreadable to me (and Chris, I would imagine), and included no pictures. This is really the way to go, because it's likely that the pictures would not have convinced me to order anything. Plus, they're Japanese, so they know what's good.
While at dinner we had various vegetables, rice, a sort of japanese hamburger (hamburgu), fish, octopus, squid (little, whole ones),
duck, chicken, and something fish smelling that out waitress spilled down my back. It was really hot. On the bright side, I got two free beers out of it (futatsu namachu). Sugoi!
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