Last Saturday, yesterday, and today, I've tried some 'new' foods here.
1. Tabehodai of Yakiniku.
Tabehodai basically has same meaning as buffet. That's it. Easy. Of course, compared to buffets in Korea, there's something different: time limit (that actually has an effect). This time, the time limit of the place I visited was 90 minutes, which means that I can order and eat any meant that are available for Tabehodai service, without any worry about the price becoming extremely expensive.
Yakiniku can be translated directly as 'grilled meats' in English, and Bulgogi(불고기) in Korean. In fact, Japanese did not use to eat meats before modern times. What does it mean? You can say that it's actually Korean kind of food.
You can see that from this sign. In the middle, it says 和牛カルビ(Wagyu Karubi), which means Karubi (Japanese way of writing 갈비Galbi, which means ribs) made with Japanese beef. Well, enough for history or something. It's 3,500 Yens per person for 90 mins and for 'unlimited' amount of meat. It seemed expensive. I thought so.
Oh and it somehow included Nomihodai, a free-drink service. And I chose melon soda. I've never drunk it in Korea, so for me it's so Japanese. In the end, I drank 3 cups of melon soda in total.
To eat Yakiniku (or 숯불구이Sutbulgui, I prefer, a Korean word), one has to grill it by oneself. It's the most important part. For the fire, charcoal is used, and it adds its unique smokey smell onto the meat.
It might be a bit difficult for the 'beginners', especially when it comes to judge whether it's well done or not. With a few times of 'failure', most of which will be edible anyway, one can get a sense.
Oh, there's an important difference. It is... yeah, it can be considered as steak, but it is not; it does not 'have to be' medium rare or rare. Well done is just the standard. Well, it'd be virtually impossible to make it even medium, because the meat is so thin. Of course it's up to one's taste, after all.
2. Cup noodle. Personally, I've eaten cup noodles for more than 10 years back in Korea. However, such experience does not help at all in Japan. The 'ideal' of each countries' cup noodle is different, and the brands are also completely different.
In Korea, most cup noodles are spicy, and there are a lot of variety of tastes so that one can eat a cup noodle which is almost 'customized' according to the one's taste. And the probability of failure is also low, as the tastes are basically similar. Of course there are variations like Udon, but in general terms.
In Japan, conversely, I've noticed a few 'categories': Soba, Ramen, Chinese, and curry-thingy. True, I haven't tried most of them yet (actually, only one have I tried for now). Though, there is an image on the cap.
Like this. It's a Soba I tried. There were several kinds of Soba, another several for Ramen, and yet another for curry-thingy, and so on; this way, there are more options to choose, but less space is left for 'fine tuning'. My opinion.
Well, nothing is special about making a cup noodle. Just pour some hot water in it and wait for a few minutes. Done. Bon appetite.
The taste was much different from that of the Soba I tried at a 'real' Soba restaurant. But it was good in its own way. Not bad. Now I have a Udon cup noodle left. Gotta try it some time soon.
The best aspect of cup noodle is its price. It costs just around 100 Yens. Usually, it costs more than 650 Yens to eat in a regular restaurant. During lunch time or with a discount coupon, though, it can become 500 Yens.
3. Finally, it's my first 'real' Napolitan. It has nothing to do with a Italian port city, Naples. It's completely and definitely Japanese.
With grilled cheese, fried egg, and Hambagu (Japanese hamburger steak) on it, Napolitan (ナポリタン) looks like this. The noodle was a lot thicker than I expected. It seemed like 2.0 mm or so.
One cannot say its taste is decent; but it's, again, good in its own way. For Japanese, they say, it reminds them of their childhood. As it's made with tomato ketchup, it's quite sweet, and the noodle is hardly al dente (which is not a flaw when it comes to Napolitan).
It costed 950 Yens. That's because I added 3 toppings for 350 Yens and 100 grams of noodles for 100 Yens. Thus, basically, it's 500 Yens. Not bad, not bad.
And the exterior of the restaurant looks like this. One can see how the restaurant would be, I believe.
Various, looks nice, happy meal time!
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