We'd constantly walked past the local crab restaurant and wondered how it was. The moving crab sign is a definite attention getter and the pictures of Japanese style crab were quite tempting. So after a morning resting and working on some backed up blog entries we headed right across the street and made our way up the elevator to the second floor. Once there we were greeted enthusiastically as usual and were ushered into a small room with a few tables where we were seated. The waitress handed us the English menu and I let Chrissy decide what to get. Once the waitress showed up and asked what we wanted Chrissy tosses the menu at me and said "You choose!". I quickly chose a combination platter having no idea what the contents were, but the price seemed right to feed two people.
The waitress came back and place a couple of dishes in front of us, one was cooked crab, the other was raw. While they were delicious the raw crab was definitely a unique item that we both had trouble finishing.
Tiny crab chopstick holders...nice touch
So we finished these and then sat for a bit. In Japanese restaurants the check is usually left at the table for all or part of the meal and when you are done you take it to the front to pay. The check was already here so we sat a bit more drinking the tea and enjoying the view. After awhile we started to wonder if that was it. Had we just paid so much money for a small amount of crab? Chrissy asked what was on the list of things I'd ordered but I'd done it so quickly that I had no idea.
We waited what seemed like an eternity wondering if we should just get up and leave. Finally another waitress came by and placed a lot more food in front of us. Thus began the second confusing part of this meal. She placed some vegetables and more raw crab in front of us, then set up some sort of liquid in a paper bowl over a flame. Then she left.
What exactly are we supposed to do with this, we wondered. After a minute or two the waitress came back and we mimed our confusion at her. She finally showed us that we were to put the items into the liquid and wait about 5 minutes then eat them. We did this and, through some bravery on my part, determined that the liquid was a soup and not oil as we first surmised. This part was very tasty and we enjoyed it a lot. Before we even had a chance to doubt our continued need to remain at this restaurant some more food was brought out for us.
This time the dish was much less confusing, just some fried crab and some crab sushi. We split it between the two of us evenly (or so Chrissy claims) and then got to choose our dessert from the menu. This part wasn't in English so we just picked the one with the prettiest picture, as is our usual custom these days, and hoped for the best. In the end the ice cream we got was quite good and we finished out our meal very satisfied.
After we finished paying we went back to the room to try to plan out our final week here. Up until now we'd thought we might travel around a bit. After seeing how hard it was to get through the train stations with our bags though we figured it'd be best to at least have a "home base" to store bags and do some travelling from there if needed. We thought Osaka would be nice, or more time in Kyoto or that general area. After checking around a bit we figured out that the leaf season was in full effect and nearly every hotel was booked solid.
After a bit of discussion we figured it'd just be best to come back to Tokyo for that final week so we'll be spending our last week here in some more familiar territory over in Shinjuku. We plan to hit Hiroshima and Osaka but will be able to get to them while we are staying in Kyoto. It'll cut our time there pretty short but with some luck we should be able to see most of what needs to be seen.
Once that work was done we made our way out to the streets of Asakusa to get some dinner and check out the area. We ended up just going right across the street again, this time to the local noodle restaurant. We'd been in Japan for this long and had yet to get any noodles, it was time to fix that. The lady who seated us also took our orders. She seemed to believe, perhaps rightly so, that we had no idea what we were doing. Instead of just letting us point out what we wanted on the menu she ushered me outside to the place where they had all the plastic models of the food and showed me what all was offered. I just nodded and walked back inside where I pointed out what I wanted.
She then asked what we wanted to drink. I said "tea please", she responded "beer?". "No, just tea or water"..."beer?". Finally I relented and ordered a beer. Chrissy, perhaps not wanting to go through a similar mind game also ordered a beer.
The food was great and the beers were fine, I guess, so we hit the street again to walk around a bit before making our way back to the apartment. All in all it was a relaxing day after the craziness of the days before.
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