All you can eat

This evening was our end of year dinner at an izakaya, a local Japanese restaurant. You can see that you sit on tatami mats and dine from low tables in the traditional Japanese style. Unlike other Japanese styles of eating, food items are shared by everyone at the table as in Spanish tapas; it's a very sociable way of entertaining. Commonly, izakaya dining in Japan is known as nomi-hodai ("all you can drink") and tabe-hodai ("all you can eat"). For a set price per person, you continue ordering as much food and/or drink as you wish, with a time limit of two hours. Time starts from when they serve the first drink and they actually wrote the time on a piece of paper and stuck it on one of the sliding paper screens!

Food is served slowly over several courses and the kitchen serves food when it's ready rather than in formal courses like Western restaurants. Delicately flavored dishes such as sushi or edamame come first followed with progressively more robust flavors such as yakitori or kara-age, finishing the meal with a rice dish to fill up. Great night! But I'm sure there will be a few sore heads in the morning.

Happy weekend Blippers!