Noodlery

The long approach to Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine has budget noodleries and regular Japanese meals.

In the eight-block Ginza area you can wet your whistle at 1,150 bars and cabarets, or play rice hockey at nearly 150 western restaurants, 80 sushi shops, 75 Chinese eateries, 36 sukiyaki houses, 34 tempura spots, 30 noodleries, 20 yakitori kitchens, 12 eel grills, and about 100 all-purpose beaneries.

In spite of inflation, energy shortages, economic contraction, and all the rest of it, trains were jammed to capacity, shops and stores thronged with shoppers, and hotels booked up in advance, especially in scenic spots, where room-rates are most expensive, and hordes of people in restaurants (even noodleries) ate as though at their last meal.

Eager to make amends and fed up with the cheap noodleries, Chinese restaurants and pricey, trendoid Thai places that all claim to serve good food from that enchanted land but don’t, I returned to this old haunt with a favourite adventureress.

Mary, correctly assuming shopping was not pencilled in on my agenda, kindly left me at a quick service noodlery, and uttering perhaps the most spoken and certainly greatest lie, ‘Won’t be five minutes’, shot off into the glister and temptation of a hundred or more shops, all in line, and open.