scribbler at large

Hello everyone! I forgot to blog for another year (!) and we are back in peak HEAT season here. If you need me, I’ll be sweating. Please forgive my sporadic posts. Hopefully my legion of fans is still out there…

I’m here to discuss lunch, because Tokyo has exposed the true lunching needs I never knew I had. I’m not sure I could have ever explained or identified them without stumbling across them in real life here.

A sneaky look at a lunch spot in an office building near my job.

My days as a server in Boston and DC made me hate weekday lunches: a horde of hungry people arriving at the same time with hard deadlines for returning to the office and a kitchen and front of house staff that can only do so much in 45 minutes. I remember a coworker of mine at Momofuku in DC saying to me “at a certain point during lunch you will look around and realize that everything is out of fucking control.” The lunch demands were basically impossible to meet, and I still have bad memories of customers standing in line at my computer, demanding to pay because they need to get back to the office within an hour. The computer can only process one payment at a time! And you’re splitting the check 6 ways. GAH!

But here, things are different. I can leave the office at 1pm for lunch, walk for (as many as) 20 minutes to a restaurant, consume a fresh, hot, tasty meal, and be back in my office chair by 2pm. I don’t understand the math, but it keeps working out! The best part is that I don’t need to worry about my relationship with the server (like in the U.S.) or yell at them (like in China). They are not worried about building rapport with me, but are also available to fulfill my wishes. If I need something, I raise my hand politely and say “sumimasen” (excuse me).

When I worked in Boston restaurants I remember being offended by people who waved at me when they needed service! They were supposed to respect me by trusting my server instincts and waiting for me to read their minds. In retrospect, this seems insane. Now I live in Tokyo where everything makes sense, and is efficient. Here, I can eat a huge, high quality lunch in complete solitude while surrounded by people doing the same exact thing. It’s AWESOME.

A bunch of dudes eating lunch by themselves in Tokyo.

Lunch is taken seriously here. Everyone eats lunch, despite the fact that there is blatant workaholism afoot, and when 12pm rolls around, the office shuts down. There is always a nearby place to buy lunch. You can buy full, microwavable or cold meals at convenience stores…and there is always a convenience store. Never have I found myself in a place with truly nothing to eat. Most train stations have some kind of snack, bakery, or lunch establishment to keep you going until the next stop. The bigger stations have so many choices I end up feeling genuine stress about where to get my lunch or snack. You may have eaten or seen pictures of onigiri, which are triangle shaped rice nuggets stuffed with tuna or salmon, or any number of other fillings and wrapped in seaweed. You can buy these and eat them on-the-go any time and pretty much anywhere.

Onigiri and other hearty snacks at the 7 Eleven near my house.

The machine ordering system at restaurants here is one of my favorite things. It’s a cross between ancient arcade and forward-thinking efficiency. As someone with poor Japanese, it scares the crap out of me, but the fear is worth it. Here are some examples:

Restaurant ordering machine. This one has pictures!

This one has English, Chinese, and Korean language options. Hooray!

When there are no pictures, things get hairy…

Many restaurants here (and there are thousands) use these machines instead of people to take orders. You put your cash in the slot and push the button that corresponds with what you want. The machine spits out a little ticket with your order on it, and you give it to the server who yells it out to the kitchen staff or gives them the ticket (or both). Then you sit down and wait for lunch. Sometimes I have to wait for a seat, but even when the line seems incredibly long, it goes quickly and I always make my lunch hour deadlines. At the end of the meal, I’ve already paid so I can just scoop up my stuff and leave. The kitchen staff will usually yell a “thank you” in unison as you leave, and I try to bow and say thank you back.

POV: waiting for a seat at a noodle place near my job.

My reading skills are limited, and I don’t always know what the machine buttons say. Some, but not all of them have pictures or English options. There is usually a line behind me, and I have been the dumb foreigner standing there for minutes while the machine shouts Japanese at me and business dudes politely avoid eye contact. Lately I have taken to watching the person in front of me and ordering exactly what they order. This has turned out really well for me, and as a result I have a deep trust in everyone else’s lunch choices. I also like to ask for recommendations, and then immediately order whatever the server says. When trying to enhance an entree, I have accidentally ordered things like a whole raw egg to accompany my ramen. Whoops. As a side note, cash is something one should carry around here, and if your bills are ratty/wrinkled, these machines will not accept! The Japanese keep their bills clean and crisp.

Recently, I went to lunch with a friend at a tempura place. I ordered what I thought was the $12 giant shrimp tempura meal, which looked incredible in the picture on the ordering machine. My friend told me she ordered the same thing. We were talking, so when the chef pointed at my ticket and asked me several questions in a seeming attempt to confirm my order, I confirmed it. Then her meal came - with rice and miso soup and dipping sauce, huge and glorious. At the same time, the chef took away all my accoutrement and brought me one lonely fried shrimp. It turned out I had only spent $2 on my meal, and my meal was one shrimp. I somehow hadn’t noticed the massive amount of change the machine had given me, and had stood by my accidental choice when questioned. The whole experience is a result of the blind terror I feel when ordering lunch.

Historically, I loathe a runny egg, but I’ve come to love this one. It’s a whole egg that somehow gets battered (I think?) and fried. You put it in your rice bowl, top with soy sauce and salt (if you’d like), mix it with the rice, and eat it. It’s a creamy, salty, yellow experience that is very very good.

On another embarrassing outing, I accidentally ordered a sukiyaki meal without knowing what it was (I just pointed to a random selection on the menu). The server brought me a raw egg in a bowl first, which got me googling (what did I just order?). When they brought me a giant sizzling pot out with actual fire burning underneath it, I had just read the definition, and the server saw my google search results on my phone. I know enough Japanese that I could follow him telling his coworkers about the idiot foreigner sitting 5 feet away from them, who doesn’t know what she’s doing. They laughed so hard at me while I cooked my delicious strips of meat. I did not fully embrace dipping the meat in raw egg, but at that point any street cred I walked in with was gone, so I wasn’t out to impress anyone.

An example of a puzzling Japanese meal. Is the teapot broth or is it tea? I spend a lot of time watching other diners before I start eating (it was broth that you pour into the bowl of rice and fried things).

The cutest Japanese hamburger (which you eat after you put it in a bag - never touch your food, folks!)

There are more restaurants per block in Tokyo than I have ever seen in my life, even without the restaurants on the 3rd, 6th, or basement floors that aren’t immediately obvious when walking by. I have completely abandoned reading reviews, because the volume is too paralyzing. I just walk into restaurants that look good and hope for the best. The good thing is that, generally speaking, the hygiene is good and the ingredients are fresh in Tokyo. Everything is at least 30% cleaner than things were in the U.S., and (without trying to insult) everyone here generally does a better job at whatever they are doing than can be expected stateside. To include cooking.

Even so, there are lunches that are better than others, and my Japanese colleagues have taken me out a couple of times to show me the good stuff (see the pictures below). When I am on my own, the noodles always call to me (see collage above). You’ll see soba, udon, ramen, Chinese, and Italian pasta in the mix. Each noodle place has little paper aprons to protect your business clothes, and somehow my fellow diners always eat every scrap of food they are given, even if they weigh 90 pounds, and the bowl they are tackling is larger than their head.

Appetizer, sides, main dish, and dessert (top left) all on one tray.

Another full meal on a tray. The dessert is coffee jelly with cream (actually super tasty). The noodles are cold, and the little plate of spice/seasoning at the top of the tray goes in the broth at the bottom right. Then you dip the noodles in the broth.

Within easy walking distance from my office, I can find Thai, Korean, Italian, Mexican, American, British, French, Belgian, Vietnamese, Indian, and Chinese foods - and probably more that I haven’t discovered yet. That’s in addition to the myriad Japanese restaurants available. Many office buildings have massive food courts hiding on one of the lower floors. A signboard outside the building will show tasteful photos of a dish from each restaurant, and that’s how you know about the food jackpot inside. You can certainly go broke eating in Tokyo, but it’s amazing how affordable some of the lunch menus are, given the portion sizes and how good it generally is.

That’s all for now. More soon! (she says confidently…)

Are you wondering where the sushi is? We’ll get to it!