Introducing 4 restaurants in Shinjuku, Tokyo

The mess in my room has really gotten out of hand lately and inspired by everyone around me that have successfully done their spring cleaning, I have been spending some time cleaning up and organizing my room. While I was sorting everything, I found a large box of flyers, entrance tickets, and notes that I collected from my three trips to Japan. I don't know if it is my procrastinating acting up again, but I just decided to push the cleaning aside (I have already done half the room already, so that should be good for now... ).

I will instead finally write about the great time I had in Japan. The large amount of pictures that I need to sort out (more than 1000) is a bit overwhelming, so I will start with a small blog post that doesn't require me to do lots of photo editing.

4 restaurants in Shinjuku: Sukiya, Kohmen, o soba masuda-ya, and Noboritei

During my trips in Japan, I was quite scared to randomly enter restaurants due to my basic Japanese skills. I was once handed a menu with lots of kanji and no pictures. (0_o) Luckily, I remembered the characters of the food that was outside in the window display. I was also able to guess most of the other items thanks to my Chinese skills and the categories that I was able to read (You can't really go wrong with a dish under the category lunch ^_^). Walking on the unfamiliar streets in Tokyo, I got the idea to take some pictures of the restaurants that I was passing by, so that I can find more information about the restaurant and the menu back in the hotel or when I return home.

That way, I will be more confident when ordering. I also don't have to worry that I don't like anything on the menu or that it is over my budget (I don't have the guts to leave the restaurant after entering ^_^)


In the picture above, you can find the restaurants from left to right: Sukiya (orange sign with red bowl), Kohmen (white circle sign), Noboritei (orange rectangular sign), and o soba masuda-ya (white rectangular sign). I don't remember where exactly this is, I only remember it is in the area between Shinjuku station and Shinjuku Gyoen garden. This is the adress that I found on the website of Noboritei: 〒160-0022 東京都新宿区新宿3-32-10. With this, you should be able to find it in Google maps.  

Now, I will give you more information about the four restaurants and tips with ordering food.

Sukiya (すき家)

At Sukiya (すき家), you can get rice bowls for a low price. I think that their most popular dish is the beef bowl (gyu-donburi or shortly, gyu-don). You can get a regular sized bowl of that for just 350 yen. Sukiya is a large chain restaurant that can almost be found everywhere.

The Sukiya restaurant in Ikebukuro that I visited during my second time in Japan had a vending machine in front, where you can pay for a meal ticket. Afterwards, you can go inside and hand the ticket to the waitress, who will serve you the meal that you chose after a short wait. You don't really need to be able to speak Japanese, but the pictures on the vending machine can be a bit small and hard to see what it is (so it is better to depend on the Japanese words) and the waitress might tell you what the dish is and if you are not alone, it can help you find out which one is yours.  

Useful words when ordering at Sukiya

Rice bowls
gyu-don 牛丼 (beef rice bowl)
buta-don 豚丼 (pork rice bowl) with optional gomadare ごまだれ (sweet sesame sauce)
seasonal: una-don うな丼 (unagi, grilled eel rice bowl)
seasonal: una-gyu うな牛 (half beef, half unagi rice bowl)
seasonal: una-tama-don うなたま丼 (grilled eel rice bowl with a runny egg on top)
seasonal: una toro don うなとろ丼 (grilled eel rice bowl with some tororo (grated yam) on top)

nami mori 並盛 = regular bowl
Ō-mori (emphasis on the o) 大盛 = large bowl
toku mori 特盛 = extra large bowl

Side dishes that you can get with your rice bowl for a small added price
o-shinko setto おしんこセット = a bowl of miso soup and a small plate of pickles
tamago setto たまごセット = a bowl of miso soup with a (raw?) egg.
san ten setto 3点セット = all three items above
sarada setto サラダセット= miso soup with a small salad
kenkō setto 健康セット = miso soup, a block of cold tofu, and hijiki (black strips of black seaweed)
Add this word in front, to change the regular soup to a miso soup with pork and vegetables: tonjiru とん汁

Curry (Karē) dishes

mune poku kare 旨ポークカレー = vegetable pork curry
Gyū ai-gake karē 牛あいがけカレー = vegetable pork curry with a side of stir fried beef that you also get on top of a beef bowl.
Buta ai-gake karē 豚あいがけカレー = vegetable pork curry with a side of stir fried bacon
Toro 〜ri chīzukarē とろ〜りチーズカレー = vegetable pork curry with cheese sauce
Chīzu teri-yaki hanbāgukarē チーズてり焼きハンバーグカレー= vegetable pork curry with a cheese teriyaki hamburger
On Tama gyū ai-gake karē おんたま牛あいがけカレー= vegetable pork curry with runny egg and a side of stir fried beef
On tama karē  おんたまカレー= vegetable pork curry with a runny egg
Teri-yaki hanbāgukarē てり焼きハンバーグカレー= vegetable pork curry with a teriyaki hamburger

They also have great breakfast sets (from 5:00 AM - 10:30 AM), meal sets (定食), and a children's menu.

Kohmen (光麺)

Kohmen (光麺) is a Chinese noodle shop and you can get a large bowl of noodles for prices ranging from 780-1100 yen. It has a menu in Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean. There might not be enough foreign menu's to go around, so it might be a good idea to download the menu in pdf that they kindly offer on their English website. You can also look at the pictures and decide on the kind of noodle that you want before you go.

Noboritei (鰻  登亭)

Noboritei seems to be an unagi (grilled eel) specialty restaurant. You can get a regular unagi-don (grilled eel rice bowl) for 1000 yen.

o soba  masuda-ya おそば 増田屋

As the name suggests, o soba masuda-ya is a soba specialty restaurant. They have a large variety of self-made soba noodles dishes (cold and warm). You can get a good filling meal for about 800-1200 yen. The menu with clear pictures of the most popular dishes can be found on their website.

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