Once I have arrived at the hostel around 1.30pm, I was told that check-in time was from 15:00 onwards. So, I left my bags at the hostel and got given a couple of brochures to tell me where to go to eat as I was feeling quite peckish. I immediately decided to ignore them as I wanted to intentionally get lost and stumble upon a restaurant that piqued my interested. I ended up at Hanamaru Udon the link on google maps and ordered some udon.
This is the first time I had a slight language barrier issue in Japan for my entire stay in Tokyo for 3 hours – no issues at airport, metro, hostel. The main reason was because of their ordering system, all items were in the Japanese alphabet, and you had to order from the machine. The fact that the machine had pictures of the food you will be getting was a massive help but didn’t really give me any clues to as what I was getting so it was a mystery meal in a sense.
As I knew no Japanese beyond ‘sumimasen (sorry)’ and ‘arigatou (thank you)’ – I got some help from the waiter who could not translate to English for me but gestured to me on how to order from the automated machine and how to pay – by the way they were cash only.
The udon and beer arrived within 10 minutes, and it was the first time I had noodles cold – it was an interesting experience. The cold noodles in contrast with the hot sauce created a nice temperature profile on my taste buds. The service from the restaurant as you can expect from the Japanese was top class and I was treated as essentially their most important customer which was nice in comparison to being treated as just a number/pile of money in the UK.
By the time I finished and walked back to the hostel it was time for me to check-in. Once checked in I stashed my valuables in the provided locker and left my bags in the dormitory style room – and yes it was a capsule hostel. I will discuss more on that in another post – got too much to talk about!