And, oh yeah, it's also the primary business sector in Tokyo that supplies the restaurant trade. You can get anything here from restaurant furniture and neon signs to plastic food. You know, the amazingly realistic plastic food displayed in the windows of a lot of the restaurants around here. They have saved me from ordering recklessly several times. Incidentally the Japanese word for this plastic food is "sampuru" which is derived from the English word "sample." Thank you Wikipedia, which calls this area "an offbeat tourist destination."
We needed bowls for soup. I like to make noodle soup. Russell was tired of using mugs. And since I decided to make myself crazy and bring Christmas to Thanksgiving a week before we left, we had to get Christmas gifts as well.
We carbed up at a noodle shop just outside the metro station exit. This was truly a local joint. They looked at us like we had three heads when we sat down at a table. The other diners gawked between puffs of smoke and chopsticks. If they could speak English they probably would have said, "you do realize you're at a local's joint don't you? McDonald's is around the corner." It took several minutes, and a lot of hand gestures, for Russell to convey we wanted a couple of rice cakes and a large portion of the noodle concoction that had lured us into the restaurant, more like cubicle, in the first place. A scrappy old guy was tossing noodles with vegetables in the window. Best advertising ever! It smelled great. It tasted great too. It prepared us for the hyper shopping session we were about to embark on.
The shopping street is long and crammed with store after store of restaurant wares. It is a veritable smorgasbord (pun intended) of restaurant supplies. At first we went into every store. It soon became overwhelming so we decided to limit ourselves to just those stores that carried what we were shopping for: Japanese dishes and sake sets. But we couldn't help ourselves and were occasionally sucked into more eclectic spaces.
I thought we stepped back into the U.S.
in the 50s no less.
Vintage!
This store sold supplies for Chinese restaurants.
It's pretty!
A store just for signs and vending machines.
The vending machines distribute tickets you buy
for food at noodle shops instead of ordering from a waiter.
This is not real. But it makes me want a carmel filled apple, bad.
And apparently they take Master Card and Visa
which is nice
This is plastic stew art.
Yes that's the Scream character in that broken bowl.
What restaurant serves this?
Don't these look good enough to eat?
I wonder what that sign says?
Not for consumption?
A veritable feast of plastic food.
What up with the tree?
Beware the little old woman with the over-stocked dish shop. Naturally we thought the tiny shop, over-stuffed with dishes of all shapes and sizes would be the place to negotiate the best deal on the sake sets we wanted. Her shop was on a side street and we practically had to wake her up and drag her out of the Lilliputian back room. The place looked like a disaster zone. Merchandise was precariously stacked on every conceivable surface. It even hung from the ceiling. The proprietor was old and tiny. What a sweet old lady we thought.
Sweet old lady my ass!
Russell negotiated earnestly with her and we strutted away with three sake sets each meticulously wrapped in Japanese newspaper. That ought to add some flavor to these Christmas gifts we mused. We felt smart and shrewd. Until we walked across the street and realized we could have gotten each set for $10 less. Not $2 less. I could reconcile that. No, we paid $10 more for each set. UGH!
That old lady ripped us off! Now who are the shrewd ones?
Well at least we got what we came for we reasoned. We got back on the train laden down with everything on our list. Four sake sets, beautiful Japanese bowls for soup and gifts for my Wine Not club.
I'm sure we got a deal somewhere in there. We kept reassuring ourselves. We would have paid a lot more if we had bought this stuff on the Ginza we muttered over and over.
A lot more.
No comments:
Post a Comment