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インド定食 ターリー屋 西早稲田店
Right next to Waseda University is an Indian Restaurant that I frequented about once a week. If I arrived before a certain time (11 a.m. I think) they had some great deals. Since my class ended a half hour before the time cutoff I’d arrive for the special, which was just a few hundred yen and consisted of a few curries, rice, naan, and an egg. Seeing this photo again I can almost taste my old usual order.
タベルナ
You know how some things don’t translate? For instance, Gerber (baby food) supposedly means vomiting in French. Or the first time Coca Cola translated its name into Chinese it meant “bite the wax tadpole.” Well, the sign above is one I frequently saw while heading to the Takadanobaba Train Station in Tokyo. It says, “taberuna” which means “Don’t Eat!” in Japanese.
(A verb followed by na in Japanese means “don’t do the verb” in a rather abrupt way of speaking. Taberu means to eat. You wouldn’t want to use this grammar on a guest unless they were about to eat something poisonous.)
I was therefore surprised to discover that this business is none other than a restaurant!
Taverna Italian food restaurant in Takadanobaba
The name comes not from the Japanese of “don’t eat” but from the Italian Taverna which is pronounced as “don’t eat” in Japanese. Too funny and too ironic. Personally, I would have chosen a different name if I was going to open an Italian restaurant in Japan.
We ate there once. It was just OK. I won’t say don’t eat there, because the sign already does.
On floors 49 through 52 of the Sumitomo Building in Shinjuku, Tokyo, you can find a bunch of restaurants with outstanding views and reasonable prices. The Shinjuku Sumitomo Building (新宿住友ビルディング) was one of the tallest buildings in the world back in the 1970s.
Today’s photo is of a lunch I had in one of the restaurants (sorry but I don’t remember which one). You will frequently see menu items in Japan featuring the word “stamina.” In the Japanese context, stamina food means raw eggs, meat, and/or vegetables. My lunch featured all three to go along with miso soup, something pickled, and some mugicha (wheat tea). If I remember correctly, this was under $10 (maybe 600 or 700 yen).
How many things can you spot in this photo give you a pretty good idea that Ryan is in Japan rather than the other way around (a bunch of Japanese kids over our house in the USA)?
I’ll start:
1) a takoyaki machine
2) sofa made for people with incredibly short legs
3) kewpie mayo
4) laundry hung up to dry
5) mugicha
Just across the road from our lodgings in Hakuba was 蕎麦酒房膳, a place that specialized in classic, hand-made soba (本格手打ちそば). Great food and a lovely atmosphere, if you happen to make it to Hakuba someday, you should give it a try.
It has been a while since I’ve shared any photos from my time in China last year. Today’s photo is of lunch before entering the Shaolin Temple. The rice wasn’t so great (as was always the case in China), but this dish in the lower right of the photo was fantastic. Anyone know the name of it? I’d like to try it again.