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Today was a bit of an unproductive day, as we were both a bit too hungover to want to get out and do much.

Luckily Michael took us out to dinner at a fantastic tempura restaurant in Shinjuku for dinner, so the day wasn’t a complete failure.

We sat in the tatami section of the restaurant, which wasn’t so good for our circulation, but was great for a farewell Japan dinner. It felt a little like we were eating at someone’s grandma’s house, all very cosy.

After dinner, we did our usual 30 minutes or so of wandering about trying to find some reasonable cake and coffee, and somehow ended up in a very strange cafe that appeared not to have had a customer since 1965 or so.

Walking into a shop or restaurant here always triggers a chorus of greetings and welcomes from all the staff, so we have a bad habit of sitting down in embarrassment rather than leaving a place we have decided is not quite up to scratch.

Despite the absence of customers, odd interior, musty smell and lack of edible looking things on the menu, we sat ourselves down and managed to choose a couple of cakes and drinks between the three of us. Unfortunately, this cafe also sticks to the irritating ‘everybody must order a drink’ rule that seems to apply throughout Tokyo.

It has to be the most annoying rule ever, and I don’t understand it at all. Even when Patrick and I have ordered two cakes and two pastries but only the one coffee, we have been told we have to order a drink each. $25 worth of food isn’t enough to gain a seat.

Luckily the odd cafe made for a memorable evening in all it’s weirdness, so Michael will not be forgetting us in a hurry.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 1:15 am and is filed under Tokyo, food, life, craziness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.