Evening in Himeji

After blogging happily with our beer, in our room, on a rented laptop (only $8 for the night) we scrubbed up and headed out for the evening.

Just a block away after passing several options we chose a quaint little restaurant with a crab on the menu board and outside awning as Mark felt like crab for dinner.

I think we were the first westerners to set foot in the place in a very long time, if ever. The staff fell silent when we entered and then were immediately excited to try and work out where to sit us. We could then see them having alittle `chat` obviously to work out who had the best English to serve us. A very sweet young woman came over with the menu`s and said they were only in Japanese. However, she could offer us one with English but then went on to explain it was a bit old. We then got the gist that not all would be available on this menu. We were fine with this and assured her we were happy to look over the menu.

Mark scoured the menu eagerly excited to work out which of the crab meals he would eat. Seaching as much as possible alas there were NO crab meals on the menu. None the less we forged ahead and to our dismay the first couple of choices were not available. We eventually chose some tempura prawns as an entree and then the waitress came over with a promo leaflet asking us which of the free offerings we would like. One was sashimi and the other an assortment of raw chicken parts. As we had experienced this previously we quickly and unitedly chose the fish. It was the wise choice as it also came with a nice salad.

We then came to ordering our main meal. We asked if they had any vegetable dishes as we fancied some steamed greens. We asked what they had in HOT veges to offer and she said only vegetables on stick. We ordered this as the idea of vege kebab sounded tastly. We also ordered grilled mackeral.

We presumed we would get a mackeral fillet or steak but we actually got a whole fish at least 12" long that had been split in half along the spine and butterflied before being grilled/ smoked and was absolutely delicious though a bit tricky to eat and bone with only chopsticks. Then to go with this along came our vegetables on stick. To our dismay it was not a hot vege kebab but actually a glass filled with cold cucumber and carrot sticks about 6" standing up in it. Along side came a dish of mayonnaise. We did feel for a moment we were in some kind of retro party but in the end they were fresh and nice to have.

We got chatting with this lovely waitress and found out she was coming to Australia to study next Feb. She was so excited and I ended up giving her my business card should she come to Melbourne.

From there we headed a few blocks away in search of the cocktail bar, Atsuco`s father recommended. There we were strolling along with the address he gave us in hand. The note was in English and Japanese to cover all bases. We found a building with the name he gave us but weren`t sure. AS we stood there trying to work out if we were in the right place a family came out of a door and we asked them to read the note and let us know if this was where we should be.

They pointed us to a door and in we went. It was a small bar, lit as intimately as a 7-11, with an elderly Geisha sitting looking bored and 3 staff shocked to see us enter. There were NO patrons in there. I handed them the note to clarify it was the right place and they said NO. They kindly rang the number on our note and then one of the waitresses walked us to the bar we were looking for. How nice is that!!

The bar was intimate and obviously a cocktail bar. Only one staff eager to serve us as his regular client Sukamoto had sent us along. Mark ordered Sake which sent him in a spin. He grabbed some cash and took off out the door. About 5 mins later he returned with a bottle of Sake for Mark. I felt bad for him and ordered a choc martini. VERY delicious. He gave us a little side dish of artistically presented fruit and a little square of dark choc. We enjoyed an hour or so of chat, looking at his holiday snaps of Scotland and discussing the nice music he had.

We ended up leaving with his 2x CD`s (burnt off the original he had at home) of the artist playing.