Star struck and bill shocked

I’d set some alarms for 1200 and 1300 but when they rang I just turned them off and slept in instead. With my hopes of getting out early and spending the day outside gone, I packed my laptop and headed to Lattest to get some blogging done.

To my pleasant surprise, Mizuki from Terrace House was there when I arrived a bit after 1700. I ordered as usual and sat down with my laptop, thinking to myself how I should go about asking for a photo, especially since she was on the clock.

In hindsight I definitely overthought everything considering that she must get fans come in and talk to her all the time. In fact as I was working on my blog, a pair of tourists came in, ordered drinks, and had a friendly chat with her while the cafe was quiet.

I decided to ask as I returned my plates to the counter. I texted Elbert for help with how to say something similar to “sorry for disturbing you” and armed with some new vocabulary I apologised for disturbing her and asked if she was “Shida-san”, to which she cheerfully replied yes. At this point I was so nervous that I lost my Japanese speaking ability and asked in English if we could get a photo together and she said, “yeah sure!” in a minimal accent.

At this point, a few new customers had walked in and even though there was someone else staffing the counter, I felt bad for taking up her time, so I hurriedly pulled out my phone and we took a picture together. I blurted out “my girlfriend watches Terrace House”, as if I don’t watch too 🤦🏻.

Michelle had wanted me to ask Mizuki for a video of her saying hi, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask 😰. I didn’t think that I’d be so nervous but I attribute it to working myself up to the encounter rather than winging it.

I walked down to Omotesando Hills (a shopping center) afterwards to look for a particular cafe called “Imperfect”, but when I got there I wanted something more substantial to eat so I walked towards Shibuya to look for food. Along the way I stopped by Sushi Kidoguchi to make a booking for 1200 lunch tomorrow (to force myself to get up early), and the chef recognised me as a previous customer, which was cool.

I’d previously combed through some online lists of places to eat in Tokyo, and saved the ones that looked interesting on my map. One that happened to be close by was Ryukyu Chinese Tama, an Okinawa-Chinese fusion Michelin starred restaurant. I expected there to be lines outside but when I went to see how long the queue was before deciding on whether to eat there, there was actually an available standing seat at the counter¹.

The atmosphere was really lively, with plenty of shouting/chanting, jokes, and conversation between chefs and patrons. Something interesting that I noticed was that customers were greeted with “konbanwa” rather than the typical “irasshaimase”. It seemed like each chef was in charge of cooking a few dishes for the restaurant, while also being the server for the customers directly in front of them at the bar. While I’m sure that every restaurant is organised chaos, here it was exposed directly for the customer to see and it was awesome to watch.

Since I told them that I couldn’t really understand Japanese, they (who I assume to be the owner since he gave me his card afterwards) put me in front of a young chef with the best English² out of the staff and said “we have no English menu but he is your menu, please ask him everything”. He asked me if I was okay with a bunch of small dishes, and since I didn’t know what was the norm here, nor how to read the Japanese menu, I nodded in agreement.

The restaurant is run by the charismatic Tamayose-san, a happy guy maybe in his early fifties who I assume owns the restaurant. Between many jokes and back and forth broken English and (my) broken Japanese, he handed me his card and told me that he was born in Okinawa and that his father is from China, explaining the style of cuisine on offer.

Throughout the night, Tamayose-san, the young chef (whose name I didn’t learn), and the other chefs next to him did their best to make sure that I was having fun. Their friendliness made it easy for me to practise my Japanese, compared to the high pressure environment that you might be in when you’re ordering or asking for help and trying not to waste people’s time. We talked a lot and I asked how they had learned their English; Tamayose-san said that he hated class but he picked it up from watching movies and from interacting with customers out of necessity, while my chef friend (who I suspected to be Tamayose-san’s son) had taken some classes during school. I told them both that their English was “jyouzu” (good) and they asked me if I was half Japanese since apparently my accent wasn’t too bad 😁.

The young chef told me that he also worked at a yakitori restaurant and that he’d be there tomorrow, so I could go there at night if I liked that sort of food. The other chefs laughed when he mentioned it, as if that was maybe something that he liked telling customers.

After I was already feeling stuffed and wondering when I would stop getting fed, Tamayose-san asked me if I could still eat and I jokingly said “yabai”³. He warned me that since it’s so versatile it can be interpreted as “I want more” rather than “I’m full”. I felt silly not saying that I was full earlier, but it was in part due to having no idea what the pricing structure was like. Was I supposed to just pay a set amount or was I paying per dish? Were there a set amount of dishes? This was in part due to the way that my chef friend had phrased it when asking me if I was okay with a lot of small dishes, which I had misinterpreted as some sort of set menu. Definitely stuff that I should’ve asked but was made harder by the language barrier.

I say with certainty that I had an incredible time enjoying the atmosphere and chat, but it was still quite a shock when the 6000 JPY bill came. The food was generally good, but I didn’t find any of it to be amazing. I took a picture of the receipt and tried to work it out at home with Elbert, but it was just a handwritten order slip without any individual prices. I also looked up reviews of the place and it turns out that everyone gets the taco rice which is served with Ozaki wagyu beef and represents great value for money. There’s always next time I guess.

It then took me about four hours to write my Sushi No Midori blog. I’m not sure how to address the problem of blogging taking so much time, but it’s something that I need to figure out if I want to keep up this daily cadence.

Waking hours

1455–2900