Day Four: Dinner and an Evening Walk at Asakusa

Asakusa (pronounced Asaksa) is a very lively neighborhood that I already visited two days ago to take in the Sensoji Temple, Asakusajinja Shrine and a famous shopping strip of Nakamise. So this is where I came back tonight deciding to stick around to see if the temple looks nice in the dark with the spotlights.While waiting for the dark to settle I had dinner.

Since our previous efforts at dinners were rather unsatisfying I decided not to experiment too much and just stepped into the first respectable looking sushi place I came across. It was one of those spots where the small plates with sushi go round on a conveyor belt and you just pick up whatever you like and then pay according to the number of plates you accumulated. Different colored plate - different price. (We used to have one of these in the World Financial Center, but I don't know if it's still around.) Somehow most of the stuff I liked fell into 120 yen category, there were also few cheaper items, like regular tuna, for instance, and some really expensive (500 yen) disgusting looking things. Beauty of this sort of place for a foreigner is that you don't have to know a word of Japanese to feel completely comfortable. As long as you know enough to recognize all the items you need, you are all set.

Don't know how high this joint would be rated among Japanese, but as far as I was concerned the food was better than the average fare you would get at a typical New York Japanese restaurant. I was rather hungry and managed to accumulate about 8 plates before getting my fill, which basically meant that my dinner cost me 1,000 yen or less than $10, and no waiting time. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

So far I've had sushi three times. First time Lena's friend Ida took us to a nice place for lunch, sushi there was excellent but she had to order for us. Second time we got a take out with my cousin, prepackaged box of sushi. That was barely passable even by NY standards and included some stuff that I don't eat, like octopus (too chewy even for me) and sea urchin (too disgusting even to look at). And this place. I only picked the stuff I recognized: yellow tail, some other white fish (I like most of those), eel, shrimp (the normal kind, not the gellied one that they seem to prefer), crab. All of it was very good.

After refueling I walked around Asakusa for about an hour, browsed through all the tiny shops lining the streets and decided on what I wanted to get for myself before leaving. Didn't buy anything yet, though. And, of course, I did get to see the temple and the surroundings. Quite pretty:

Complete album: Asakusa