Dinner… And Hoppy.

So…  Still no apartment, and every evening we are still searching out restaurants to try in this area. Last night we again headed down into that little alleyway area behind Tamachi Station. It is an interesting little area filled with tiny little restaurants of all sorts.  Most of them serving traditional Japanese foods…  lots of grilled meats and fish. Last week when we were there, the restaurant we chose was grilling fish over an open fire of burning straw. We didn’t actually try the fish cooked that way, but I can imagine it to be a very smoky tasting meal.

Last night… hoping to find something more vegetarian friendly (almost an impossible feat in Japan, I am afraid), we were “nabbed” by a young women standing on the sidewalk with a menu in her hands. She spoke fairly good English, so we listened to her pitch for the restaurant, and decided to give it a try. Up a narrow staircase we went, to a tiny little restaurant on the second floor overlooking the sidewalk. No other patrons were in the room…  we had the place entirely to ourselves for the whole time we were there.  The menu was all in Japanese, but she had an “English menu” with broken descriptions of the foods that they offered. She, however, very patiently described the dishes, and helped us select a seared salmon dish (and I mean very lightly seared, as in almost sashimi) and a Caesar salad.  The salad was beautiful with red and orange peppers and a purple broccoli I have never seen before. The “Caesar” part of it was a soft-cooked egg on top. Perfectly, amazingly delicious! I would go back to that restaurant — if I can find it — just for that awesome salad!

We saw a sign on the wall for “Hoppy” which appeared to be a local beer, so we ordered that as well. What they brought to us was a glass half filled with ice and a clear liquid, and a swizzle stick, and a bottle of Hoppy Black. Lol… I tasted the clear liquid, and it was some kind of liquor — I was guessing sake — and we poured the Hoppy into the glass to mix.  It was very good, but I had never seen such a way to serve “beer” before. As it turns out, Hoppy isn’t really beer, and in fact, only has 0.8% alcohol.  And the clear liquor was not sake, but shochu (with 25% alcohol.) The story and history of this beverage is in the following link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoppy_%28beverage%29

Interesting. Lol…I am ready to go back for some more Hoppy…