Eating in a box

In the middle of our trip we took a four day excursion to Kyoto. The city once was the capital of Japan until the Emperor relocated the capital to Tokyo. Kyoto is a very different city compared to Tokyo, it has a fraction of the population (1.5 million) and as a result is not nearly as busy. Kyoto is known for old architectural buildings as well as lots and lots of temples and shrines. We passed Mt. Fuji while on the bullet train. Kyoto Tower (it's more impressive at night) We only had two solid days in the city since the first and fourth days were consumed with travel. Riding the Shinkansen (Bullet train) it took us 2.5 hours to get to Tokyo not bad for covering 320 miles. Kyoto train station is every bit as large as Tokyo's. It's got at least two department stores and a hotel attached to it with a huge variety of restaurants. This picture really doesn't cover it, I just liked the roof structure. We stayed near the station at an older hotel, the K...

Best meal I had while in Tokyo? Well there were two and this is one of them. Our friend that took us on a mini tour of Tokyo over the weekend took us to his favorite lunch place for dinner. During lunch they serve a bustling crowd with Kaisen Don (a Sashimi rice bowl). He had never been here for dinner and reserved us a space for an Omakase dinner, the chef's selection, the literal translation is "I'll leave it up to you". I couldn't for the life of me tell you the name or where this restaurant is, the only thing I have is the above picture of the sign outside the building. The restaurant is very nondescript, it was on the third floor right around a stairwell and had I been walking around I would have missed it. It's really close to the Parliament building so the part of town is nearly deserted during the evening. Here's the photo of the restaurant, it's shot from our table of four and there's a four seat behind the screen. 20 seats. The...