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How long has it been since I went to Izakaya last time?
Izakaya is a place to drink and eat, just as I explained before in this post.

There are so many kinds of Izakaya in Japan.
Usually Izakaya has wide variety of dishes, alcohol drinks, soft drinks and desserts.
The price is not so high and interior or atmosphere is good enough to relax us and make us feel like staying for a long time.

Also, look at the menu. How could it be any easier than this? This Izakaya I went the other day is “DomaDoma“, sort of Izakaya chain store that has many branch stores anywhere in Japan. Some dishes tasted so-so. There are a lot of great Izakaya restaurant bar (is it OK to call it so?) in Tokyo and I have no idea which one to try everytime because I’m kind of person who always wanna try something new rather than repeating the favorite ones. I wanted to try more cocktails but I could feel alcohol ratio seems too small! Anyway, Izakaya is far from a “bar”. It’s more casual and we can select whatever we want to eat from wide range of menu. It’s not like peanut & small snack. We can complete a dinner with alcohol beverages and even after that we can have dessert like ice cream, pudding, or cake with coffee, if we order them. Oh, the order can be made anytime. So we don’t have to decide everything at the beginning.

“Toriaezu” is a convenient way of saying. We will never know how much we can eat. So we choose only a couple of dishes from the menu and order them, saying “Toriaezu Sorede” at the end. That means we are ordering some at a moment, but later we may order something additionally. Of course we don’t have to return the menu. It’s always besides us, at the table, as well as a button to be pressed to call for a waiter.How convenient and casual service! Here’s some samples. Izakaya cuisine always tastes a little too strong so that it gets along with beer or sake. The bottom left is pork stomach. It’s good to go to Izakaya with 3-4 people and share various kinds of foods and drinks.

These days Yen is very strong to other major foreign currencies such as US$, Euro, GBP, AUS$, CAN$, and NZ$. Since Yen has been very weak for the past several years, and it’s been for years since I find such exchange rate last time.

US$1=99 yen
1Euro=127 yen
1GBP=161 yen
1$AUS=66 yen
1$CAN=79 yen
1$NZ=59 yen

1Euro needed as much as 170 yen before Lehman Brothers shock that happened mid Sept. in the U.S.
I can remember 1$AUS costs 106 yen at most only a few months ago.
Strong yen makes me feel happy and today I bought some Euro to prepare for my travel to Europe someday. Euro has been so strong for years and I really missed any chance to visit Europe, because when I convert any price, I felt reluctant to go there.
But now, going to any these countries do look reasonable to me.
I wish I could just fly to anywhere at any moment…

It’s my favorite season, autumn in Japan. Best season for foods, sports, book reading, travelling, etc., etc… At the same time though, do we have to think forward and forward, to prepare for end-of-year and comming new year? It’s our culture to eat Osechi cuisine on a new year day and several days after then. Osechi is usually precooked by a housewife from new year eve so that we can eat them while new year days since we have 5 or 6 days holiday at a new year time and stores are considered all closed.

But that’s an old story. Japanese are known as “work too much people” (I do dislike this but…) and nowadays especially at Tokyo area, grocery stores are open from very new year’s day, (1st January) so there’s no functional or practical meaning that we have to stick to this old custom any more, if only we discard all the meaning Osechi cuisine has.

Osechi cuisine as you can see, consists of many kinds of foods. Each food has a meaning such as longevity. These days stores open from 1st Jan. and there should be no reason that we have to eat Osechi day after day, but in spite of that, the trend goes opposite. Deluxe Osechi sells so well and people are willing to pay for a beautiful and tempting Osechi boxes.

It’s weird to write this but I’m personally bored of my life in Japan. How much I wish I could live a pretty new life somewhere else than Japan where I can learn the custom or culture from zero. So I’m totally fed up with the same thing coming year after year. Having Deluxe Osechi might allow me to have some “change” from ordinary every year so far? I doubt. I’m dying for a change!! Blogging to get connected with people from other countries at least gives me a little feeling as if I were out of here. It’s funny some of my blog readers dream to come or live in Japan, while I dream to do that out of Japan!