Cheap Eats in Tokyo

When it comes to entertaining in Tokyo, most people think of a city full of spectacular neon lights, expensive restaurants and the famed Geisha. While in certain quarters, this may very well be true, when I was in this enchanting city for five days recently, I found a number of restaurants where you could have a good lunch for under $5 and a very filling dinner for under $10. On any given day, I must have passed no fewer than 25 small store-front establishments serving everything from sushi, tempura, udon (usually served as hot noodle style soup), soba (thin buckwheat flour noodles served hot as a soup or cold with an array of sauces) and set meals with tonkatsu (delicious deep fried and breaded pork- usually served with a sweet thick sauce), katsudon (fried pork cutlet over rice) as well as oyakodon (small pieces of sliced chicken, usually served with egg and vegetables over rice) and no doubt ninety other variations. Set meals often come with a small soup and salad, so for 900 yen or approximately $9, I couldn’t complain. Too make things even easier, most of these small restaurants either had a vending style machine in the front of the shop with pictures and prices where you buy a ticket that corresponds to the food you want. If no machine is present, nine times out of ten, there are plastic models of the food restaurant sells in the front case. If your Japanese language skills are not up to par at that exact moment, feel free to point at what you want. There are so many tourists and other foreigners in Japan, that restaurant employees have no qualms about going over to the window with you. The most number of these types of restaurants are often gathered around subway and train stations. But believe me, you don’t have to get out your Tokyo metro map to find a good meal.

Sitting in these ten and twenty seat restaurants, you will find a great cross section of society seated next to you. From students and retirees to the ever pervasive salary man that has been dramatized the world over. In almost every instance, someone started up a conversation with me. Even if their English wasn’t very good, they wanted to know where I was from and if it was my first time to Tokyo. My favorite question came from a very cute elderly woman, Hiroko, who was quite hunched over and had a beautiful smile on her face the whole time she was eating. After she found out that I was from Los Angeles, she wanted to know if I ever saw Angelina Jolie. I told her no, but I did tell her that I did see Brad Pitt, once. What happened next was just great. Hiroko became very excited and told the waitress what I said in my stop and go Japanese. They both giggled like little girls with Hiroko whispering to me… “Brad Pitt, very very cute!”

When you are in Tokyo, you have to check out the lower levels of the large department stores. The B1 levels usually house large food halls. You can’t eat in these places mind you. Normally, there are no tables to snack at, but you can buy very good and inexpensive gourmet food that you can take back to your hotel room to eat. Japanese don’t walk and eat in public, so I wouldn’t recommend doing it either. It isn’t thought of as polite. I made great use of these lower level markets when I was a student living in Japan. I even hawked imported fruit in one of these food emporiums. Back in the 80’s, as an American college student with blonde hair and green eyes, I was a bit of a novelty welcoming customers and imploring them to buy oranges. Needless to say, I had a lot of fingers pointed at me, but I sold a lot of food and ate very well. Another fun little adventure is going to the local supermarket. You will realize very quickly how much they resemble your own market, but that there are a lot more prepared and fresh foods to choose from, somewhat like Trader Joes and Whole Foods, if these ring a bell. Inevitably, like everywhere else, conversations will be started, smiles will be exchanged and a good will ambassador has been made.

Have fun and eat a lot.