First Yakiniku Experience!

Well its official, we survived our first month in Japan. Thought we might get to experience a Typhoon but it ended up only being a Tropical Storm by the time it reached us! Since my last blog I have been just hanging out around the base lately, we did check out HOOP, a bagel shop with a friend. A super delicious place I'm sure I will frequent for lunch! But onto the real delicious story of our dinner...

Last night we were invited out to dinner with one of Zack's co-workers and his wife. They took us to Haikara Tei Yakiniku Dining!

 

Yakiniku means grilled meat in Japanese. You order different cuts of meats and grill them yourself at your table! The menu is a little overwhelming at first because nothing is in English (until they bring you the one menu they have some-what translated), the menu consists of raw meat cuts anywhere from Prime Rib to tongue and intestine! One thing that caught our eye was Dragon Steak, of course Zack had to order it to see what it was! 

What Zack Ordered!

 

Pork and beef were the only options, we are still assuming that Dragon Steak is beef, but there was every kind of meat off a cow and some insides as well! They also served noodles, meat and rice bowls and kids meals in case ordering and cooking your meat isn't your cup of tea. In the middle of the table is the grill, after you order (which consists of many head nods and pointing to try to get the waiter to get your order right) they turn the grill on.

 

Grill in the middle of the table.

 

I ordered a set, sets mean you get the main dish with salad, soup and rice, with short rib and loin cuts. Zack ordered a the huge meat plate with a side of rice (next time we will be splitting the large meat plate!) and a coke. We got Sawyer a noodle kids set since he loves noodles so much with a melon drink, which ended up being like a melon flavored sprite.

 

Family Picture!

Once the food hit the table we realized we had WAY too much food but wasting food is not an option and since you don't get to take anything home you just got to dig in!

Sawyers meal. He LOVED the noodles!

Ate some of the sausage but

Wasn't a fan of the egg or edemamme!

 

My meal on the left, Zack's on the right!

 

It was really awesome getting to see how the different cuts of beef all tasted so different even though it all had the same seasoning on it. I really like the loin the most!

Dinner cooking!

 

When they brought out the silverware I was wondering why they brought a pair of kitchen scissors, once the guys started cooking their dragon steaks I realized what the scissors were for. Since you eat with chopsticks (this was the only restaurant so far that hasn't brought out western utensils and only chopsticks!) the larger dragon steak has to be cut somehow:

 



Zack using the "knife"

 

With the set you also get a dessert, Almond Jelly. I only tried one bite as I was overfull, but it was good. Sawyer ended up eating the entire dessert before I could get a picture of it. All in all it was a delicious dinner! And I would hope that it was for the cost, because it was over $60 for the 3 of us to eat! We will be going back but now we know that the larger platters of meat are more than enough for me and Zack to split and get two small sides of rice or we can both get sets and eat for about $40. 



 

Until our next adventure.

XOXO