On the road: Nagoya

This isn’t actually a review- for that I‘d have to know the name of the place where I ate. Suffice to say, 8 PM in Nagoya found me and amg on a side street, contemplating two important truths. 1) We were faint with hunger, and 2) We were the only Westerners in the entire city.

Finding a snack bar would mean forging through the crowds of serious, black-suited businessmen and mayfly-like girls, stiletto’d and limping, that seem to be Nagoya’s chief export. Finding a decent restaurant meant being able to read any of the signs (or at least knowing what the mysterious lacquered ‘example food’ in each storefront was). So we found a place by stepping through the nearest doorway.

We found ourselves at the stone bar of a low ceilingd wooden izakaya. Wild gesticulations convinced the amused bartender that English menus were in order. I ordered ‘Ocha duke” (I think) which was, apparently, green tea over rice with seaweed and salmon. Amg ordered a bowl of rice with Nagoya Hochin and egg. This turned out to be a sweet curry and, indeed, raw egg. As I sat contemplating whether the wooden spoon was for eating with or stirring everything up, or perhaps serving, or just ornamentation, amg pointed repeatedly to his bowl and the similar second bowl that he’d been given, trying to figure out what exactly, to do with it.

The entire staff found excuses to watch us happily (tho clumsily) chewing away, giggling behind their hands at the strange people with big noses. At one point the manager walked over and carefully asked us a phrase. We got it on the third try.

‘Wheh ah yoo fom?’
‘Washington DC’
‘Wassinton DC!’ he yelled triumphantly to the girl in back. They probably had a bet going.