This post was written in 2007. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
I bought a 5-megapixel phone but hadn’t really been making good use of it. The main reason is that the picture quality was below what I’d hoped for, but it’s still fine for keeping a simple record, so from now on I’m going to try to use it a bit more actively.
These days I’ve been bringing a packed lunch almost every day, so I’ve hardly been going to restaurants. I drank too much on Friday and couldn’t pack a lunch on Saturday morning, so for the first time in a while I went out for lunch. These are the photos I took then.
The place I went to is a restaurant called Umisachi on the ground floor of a hotel called Rainbow Plaza. Rainbow Plaza is a tourist hotel tied to the Oki Islands, which are kind of like Korea’s Ulleungdo, so the food is pretty good. Most tourist and hot-spring lodgings in Japan serve tasty food. It’s a strategy to draw guests in with the cooking. Plenty of guests choose where to stay by looking at what food is served rather than at the facilities. I’m one of those people too ^_^ Rather than going out of my way for an expensive place, I prefer somewhere small and cozy with good food. I’m almost never disappointed.
840-yen lunch set
You get sashimi, udon-suki, fried salmon, and even dessert. Ordinary Japanese lunch sets give you a lot of satisfaction for the price. There’s real joy in them.
Udon-suki
Well… the udon itself is nothing special, but I’d been craving a warm broth, so I enjoyed it.
Fried salmon
Autumn is when salmon is at its best. It’s a fry of fish in season, so there’s no way it could be bad. The coating was a little soggy, but lunch sets are made ahead and then served, so you have to put up with that much.
Miso soup
There’s a chunk of sea bream in it. Satisfaction shoots right up.
Sashimi
As expected, the freshness is to die for. Japanese sashimi tastes different from Korean hoe. They age it before eating. It doesn’t have the chewy texture you get in Korea, but when you eat it with rice, I think this style works better. (When eating raw fish on its own, the Korean style wins.)
Dessert: candied sweet potatoes
In Japanese they’re called daigaku imo, literally “university potatoes.” I’m not really sure why they’re called that.
For 840 yen, a full spread right down to dessert is really cheap. The Japanese person I went with called it a “conscientious price.” It’s one of those odd expressions Japanese people use, and I can’t quite get my head around it. Does that mean an ordinary price is an unconscientious one…? I guess I just have to take it as a Japanese idiom…
I should use my phone more too and post more often. Winter’s coming, so it’ll be hard to go anywhere, but this is for the spring that’s on its way.