8 March 2012
Indian curry in Japan
Eating in Japan can be cheap. The cheap places dont trust their staff to handle money, instead they have a vending machine you stick money in and press buttons and you get a ticket.
This system works well, especially if theres pictures on the buttons or at least numbers you can match the pictures to.
I planned to eat in such an establishment at some point during the evening.
First I caught the train to Shibuya and wandered around for an hour or so before walking to Harajuku and wandering around. At this stage I got some money from an ATM, the smallest amount it will give me is 10,000 yen, about $120. It dispenses this with a single 10,000 yen note.
This poses a problem because none of the restaurants will take a 10,000 yen note in their machines, and they dont take credit card.
No problem I thought, I will go to the convenience store, buy a drink and get change. No. They dont want the 10,000 yen note for a 100 yen purchase either.
After much wandering, I was about to end up at mcdonalds or mos burger when I saw a place without a ticket vending machine that didnt cost a fortune, an Indian curry restaurant. There are curry restaurants everywhere but they are generally Japanese curry, either the coco chain or a competing one that uses a gorilla, these places have the ticket system.
Thats probably enough bullshit about a 10,000 yen note and vending machines.
The busy area of Shibuya.
Apparently this is the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world.
A random overpass means I can rest my camera and get some blurred headlights.
One of the main streets in Harajuku.
I dont know how Japanese school girls wander around in the cold with their extremely short school uniform skirts. Harajuku is full of thousands of them.
Some Nigerian scammers were busy trying to convince groups of girls to accompany them down a dark alley for glamour photography. They were holding up cards with girls photographed in lingerie. What could possibly go wrong?
The streets are filled with trucks like these, advertising the latest j-pop debacle with blaring loud speakers.
My dinner. It was ok. The only meat curry on offer was butter chicken. Theres also enough rice for 4 people and the tandoori entree came out of the microwave I think. Theres also a squirt of ketchup.
This restaurant was full of near suicidial salarymen who cant face going home (thats my theory anyway). They seemed to know the owner but all kept to themselves reading newspapers. In the time I took to order and eat none of them had moved.