Department store lunch

We were startled awake by an earthquake on Sunday morning. Frankly I was pretty scared and started thinking about what being on the top floor of the hotel meant, during an earthquake. The pictures in my head weren't pretty as we didn't have too many options for an escape route. But these pictures started to fade as soon as the tremors stopped. There was a brief announcement on the news, but apparently the quake was pretty small and it didn't impact anything in a negative way. Marc told me that this happens all the time and no one is really bothered by them. I just don't want the big one to hit in the middle of my vacation :)

We ventured out into the rain to grab food at about 10:30am. We took some stairs across the street from the hotel and found a bridge over the trains to Takashimaya Times Square. On the way we passed a Krispy Kreme which had a line so long, it wasn't even a consideration as to stop there.

Takashimaya is a 14 story building that houses a number of department stores. We entered the building though Tokyu Hands - a department store with 8 floors full of odds and ends from camping equipment to furniture to toilet paper holders shaped like the statues at easter island - its a pretty interesting store and there are a couple of items we will be heading back there for before we leave.

The department stores here all have restaurants in them, and this building had 3 floors of them. So when they opened at 11am we hit the elevator to the 13th floor to get some grub. We found a directory which had some pictures and walked into a place rather arbitrarily. We were seated right away and as the waiter left i noticed a couple of things. The menu had no english, the only pictures in it were watercolor paintings of food, and lastly, there was no pricing to be found. Erica had made the same observations and had a stunned look on her face.

At this point the waiter came back and i asked him "Ei go no menu wa arimasuka?" - is there a menu in english. He just smiled at me and shook his head no. I laughed to myself as the waiter walked away. So we ordered two dishes by pointing to the watercolors and hoped that a) they were good and b) they didn't cost $200 a piece.

The food came pretty quickly. We found out that Erica had ordered some cold udon with seaweed and raw egg, and i had ordered some hot udon with various tempura. Mine was really good. the broth had some complex flavors and the udon was cooked perfectly. It had a smokey base flavor highlighted with some citrus and it went so well with the different tempura. Erica's was interesting. The combination of the seaweed and the egg gave the noodles a very slimy consistency. The flavors were very subtle but when the noodles were gone there was very little interest in finishing the broth they had been in.

The bill came to about $30 which was a bit much for lunch but we learned a lesson and had our first experience where no english was used. We made a vow then to always carry the phrasebook with us, so we have more to offer than just blank stares and telling the waiter we're sorry that our japanese is bad.

Next time i would take someone who is a bit more familiar with the culture to a department store lunch.