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Same can be said to restaurants. Gurunavi is a well-known index site for restaurants and Izakaya with discount coupons, but it’s not the resources I trust when I choose the place to eat or drink.
That’s because Gurunavi only lists restaurants of which the owner agreed with paying for the advertisement cost to them. In other words, if there are small good restaurants but cannot afford paying Gurunavi for advertising, they can never be found in Gurunavi.
That’s why I do pay more attention to Tabelog. Even though it doesn’t offer discount coupons, it’s more reliable in a sense that we can reach true comments from “experienced” people.

I also like browsing Couponland, a free magazine to look for restaurants or beauty salons I may want to try but the other day it was totally my mistake that I didn’t double check at Tabelog after I found a nice hotpot restaurant from Couponland. Now I can see why I was unsatisfied with what we had, when I read the comments left for it at Tabelog. (You may understand what’s written, depending on your Japanese skills. But even without it, you can see it’s not very good from the numbers of stars!)

As you can see in the photos, I went out to eat a soy milk hotpot with a lump of chicken collagen in Shinjuku (this restaurant) with my husband the other day. That was only because the photo I found at a Couponland was tempting, as well as discount coupon, of course! I forgot to check the reputation of the restaurant at Tabelog, and this was a big mistake!

The problem was that the foods were not worth for the money we paid. Nowadays we can get things at reasonable prices with not bad quality, I feel I have paid much more than it deserved. The soy milk hotpot (tounyu nabe 豆乳鍋) was not bad, but total amount was too expensive for what we took. I never asked all-you-can-drink for 1500 yen per person, but they charged us by mistake. (I noticed their mistake when I paid money, so I didn’t pay this. If I include this amount, the sum will be something way too much!) I was disappointed at my selection, and that I missed checking at Tabelog.

If you have a chance to stay in Japan, be sure to check out the restaurant beforehand, and pick out the one you go to wisely, because there are millions restaurants and Izakaya in the city area. It’s not easy to choose the one you want to try. I’d browse Couponland to find a restaurant (Izakaya) I want to try out, check it out at Tabelog for reputation, and search it at Gurunavi and if they offer better discount than Couponland, I’ll use it. At a moment, I follow this way!