Seeing japanse people eat is always interesting, and when the salary men are swarming the streets looking for a hot plate or a cold fish after it is like a shark feeding frenzy with discussions outside restaurants, automatic waiters taking orders from automatic clients, and streets that fill up with wonderful smells tempting you into a ramen basement or a grill bar.

One of the things I love about asia is the difference in the look and style of the eateries, from local fast food to fancy dining, from chic to street, from candle light to a thousand neons painting the sky. You can find it all, and unlike the counterparts in the west, there is still the joy and innocence of the pre-overstylized world of restaurants we know and hate these days.

And you can clearly see the difference also in the clientele, with silk kimonos for the ladys who lunch, square suits for the masses, and the chic for the night time cafes and posh eateries. To each his own, his place, his time of day, and you just have to sit and watch them go buy on the way to another tasty morsel or two.

For me, every different restaurant was an experience, a party, a reason to smile. It doesn’t really matter If I ended up eating there or just snooping around, it was easy to get what it was all about, easy to understand the nature of the relationship they have with food and its role in the Japanese culture.

 And the ones that I did try? Well, I cant complain.  It’s not easy going around different countries and trying out fabulous foods, it’s a dirty job, but hey, somebody has to do it…