My Favorite Place to Eat

Yesterday, I was shown a new place to eat and since then, it has been my favorite spot in Nagoya. I think the restaurant is called Matsuya but am not one hundred percent sure. If it is my favorite restaurant why do I not know its name, you may ask; try reading Kanji and then get back to me.

This is a picture of what the front of the store looks like:



Anywho, you can see the menu board to the right of the doorway. They have about twenty-five or thirty items to choose from. I like the "Large Healthy Chicken Curry with Rice" the best so far. The last time I ate there, I had the "Beef Over Rice" bowl and it was also good.

Each meal comes with a bowl of miso soup and I think the kind of miso changes throughout the day or maybe from location to location, I am not sure. You also get a cup of tea. I am not sure what kind of tea it is but there is a hint of mint to it and its quite tasty. When I order my curry I also get a cup of water with the meal.

The process of ordering the food also is worth mentioning. As soon as you walk through the door, there is a little machine to the left of you. The machine looks like this:



As you can see, there are a bunch of little buttons on the front of the machine and a place to insert coins and bills. When you have decided what meal you want, you put the proper amount of money into the slot, and then press the button that matches your meal selection. A second later, the machine spits out a little ticket that you hand to the guy behind the bar. That guy then makes your food and you are eating a hot Japanese meal within a couple of minutes. Its that easy.

The thing that seals the deal is the price of the food. My curry with miso soup, tea, and water, comes to 390yen, which is roughly $3.60. You can't beat that. In the US, the same meal would run you at least $10.00, if not more, and would take ten times as long to get made and served to you. The beef bowl that I had tonight was a tad more expensive, coming in at $4.90. Still, not to bad.

Food is not cheap here for the most part so I have a feeling that Matsuya is going to be feeding me quite often. I have been looking at the cost of raw ingredients that I may want to stock my kitchen in my upcoming apartment with and I must say, it doesn't look good. Eggs are not cheap, almost double the price of eggs in the States. Any kind of American box mix that I may want to make is pretty much out of the question. A box mix for Betty Crocker Chocolate Chunk Brownines runs a tad over $7.00. Seven bucks for a box of browie mix!? It is condidered an import, imported things are spendier. Campbell's Soup is $2.50 a can and I am not talking about the hearty style either, this is straight up Chicken and Noodle action. Its funny though, spices are about the same amount of money as they are in the US.

The bottom line is, with places like Matsuya to feed me, it is cheaper for me to go that route than to make my own food. The stuff is not like McDonalds and it won't give me a heart attack and its cheaper. Will I get sick of it, yeah, eventually, but that will be a while.