Eating out in Japan is pretty much the same as dinning in any country. The selection is probably a bit slimmer, as there are usually only fast food, Japanese food, spaghetti, Chinese noodle shops, and French restaurants. Occasionally we have found Mexican, or Thai food, but usually these restaurants are run by Japanese people. It's a little sad. Usually at home, if you go to a Chinese restaurant, the food is prepared by Chinese staff, and hopefully it is more authentically Chinese than if some Canadian of English, or Italian ancestry prepared it. In Kumamoto there is a great Mexican restaurant with Mexican chefs! So, you can order your meal in either Spanish, Japanese, or English.
Many foreigner friendly restaurants have English menus as well as Japanese menus. This really helped out for the first few months. Also, most restaurants display their menu with plastic food displayed in the front window. So, you take a look and if anything looks good, then you go inside. Usually inside, they have a picture menu. So, if you can't read Japanese, you can just point. Another great thing about spaghetti restaurants, and I call them spaghetti and not Italian because they really can't be called Italian restaurants, is that most of the menu is written in the Japanese script of katakana. This script is relatively easy to learn and easy to figure out what is on the menu. For example, in Roman letters, "supageti mito sosu" is spaghetti meat sauce, and "koka kora" is coca cola. It's great!
To see all of the pictures below, please click on the arrows to the left and
right.
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