The Road Less Traveled

Japanese Vending Machines & Gomame-ya Ramen

Sunday, September 21st, 2008 by Rintaun | Uncategorized

Since I’ve been in Japan, I’ve seen about a billion vending machines. I’ve yet to confirm the rumors that you can get anything out of vending machines in Japan, but so far they usually seem to hold three things: tea, coffee, and several varieties of flavored water. Oh yeah, and every once in a while, jelly in a can…

In any case, I’ve been slowly making my way through all the drinks in the vending machine in the cafeteria on the 2nd floor. So far I have enjoyed almost all of the different types of flavored water I’ve tasted. I say flavored water, but honestly, they’re probably just weakly flavored drinks, which in my opinion is absolutely no different. :p The one type of tea I tasted was a bit too bitter and earthy for my tastes. The tea we have with pretty much every meal, though, is growing on me. I have yet to try any of the coffee drinks, as I’m still clinging to the last threads of my anti-caffeine beliefs.

My problem there is that, well, as I can’t READ Japanese, it’s very difficult for me to figure out whether or not the drinks actually HAVE caffeine in them… so I’ve just been drinking them anyway, and who knows. Is ignorance bliss? I don’t know…

Aside from tea, coffee, and essentially flavored water, I have seen cigarettes sold in vending machines. I’m also told that you can buy beer from them, but I have yet to see it personally, at least as far as I’m aware. Also, right outside the drug store, there’s an EGG vending machine. That’s pretty sweet.

Moving on, last night me, Mike Marion, and James Glanzman went to a place in Kasugai called Gomame-ya Ramen. It was really good food. We all three ordered the “Gomame-ya Ramen” specialty, 1. because we could read it, and 2. because any dish that the place names after itself must be good… right? We each go 3 different kinds, even though I’m still not sure exactly what they were. I got something ending with tonkotsu (mine was the only one in hiragana), James got ama shio, and Mike got jyuku Miso. All three were very good. We’re thinking next time we go back, we’ll all get one of the other ones. The price wasn’t bad, either, at 650￥.

Oh yeah, when we signed in at the restaurant, you had to circle something on the sheet… I guess I circled “no preference?” I figured it was for smoking.. now we think it was for choice of table type. In any case, we ended up at the Japanese-style tables where you sit on the floor at a low table (the name for which escapes me at this moment). And, of course I, like a little kid, stepped up on the thing without taking my shoes off. Luckily about one and a half seconds after, I realized and got down… maybe nobody noticed. Yeah, right.

After that, we finally all figured out what we wanted, even though we had no idea what any of them WERE, and we couldn’t figure out if we were supposed to hail a waiter/waitress or just wait for them to come back. Well, if we had continued to wait to see what other tables did, we would still be waiting. Luckily after not too long, a nice English-speaking Japanese woman at the next table over told us that we needed to press a button on a wooden bell-shaped thing. Ah, the digital age.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I have to go get dressed and ready to go to some Multi-cultural event in Nagoya. I’ll take my camera along and (hopefully) take pictures. Bye!

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