Day 3 - Lunch

I'm getting really good at ordering without words.  Here is my technique.

1. Only go to restaurants with picture menus outside the front door
2. Point at the picture you want, making sure it has a mix of items (single-item ordering is dangerous since you don't know what you are ordering)
3. If the waitress asks you a question, just say "hai" which means yes.  Sometimes this has hilarious results, but it's better than just staring at her.
4. If she asks the same question again, it was probably an either/or question so hold up two fingers to select the second option.
5. If she asks the question a third time, say "omakase" which essentially means "you pick".

Here is my picture menu.

Picture menus are useful

You can see that the first item has "No. 1" by it, so it must be the best.  That's what I ordered.  Notice that I picked something with rice, soup, and lots of different dumplings.  I also said "hai" when she asked me a question.  You can also see in the far bottom right a +200 yen and a bowl of spicy tofu.  It turns out, she asked if I wanted to add that bowl to my meal.  Apparently upselling exists in Japan too.

Doesn't it look like the picture?

This meal bears a strong resemblance to the picture, which is good.  Sometimes the pictures are like the Wendy's commercials on TV where the burger looks perfectly juicy, but when you order it, looks like clay.  For example, see this picture menu.



Which would you order?

 I saw a woman eating here.  Her burger looked pretty bad, and that's saying something since none of these burgers look particularly appealing to me.  What is going on with #8?

Next door I saw an Indian restaurant.  There were no Japanese people inside, so I stayed out, but I did take a picture of the menu.  Which picture would you choose?

Great place to park a bike