WASYOKUSATOHOURYUUJI

Nine of us had a yearly party for our English class members. We could eat as much as we liked for two hours, including nabe with pork, beef and vegetables. We also ordered several other dishes from the menu. We also drank different kinds of alcohol. The quality of the food was good. We had a great t...ime talking to each other and eating really delicious food.

Visited January 2016

After a morning at Horyuji we wanted to take the bus from Horyuji to Yakushiji. The Tourist Information Centre tells us how and where to do this. The bus station is a bit of a walk from the TIC, which is a bit of a walk from the temple entrance. Next to a parking area beyond the station is a re...asonable place to eat, a family restaurant with high volume, bordering on fast food but sit-down with waitresses. We sit and ponder the picture menu and make our choices, then signal a waitress.  She comes and gestures toward a tablet resting in a charging cradle at the end of the table and goes away.  This high tech ordering via wireless without human interaction is all well and good, but we can't even get the thing going, being unable to read the instructions.  Eventually a pleasant waitress with fair English shows up and helps us out.  Things are vastly more complicated than we'd imagined.  It's not enough to have chosen a "set."  Usually we point to a set menu and it magically appears as illustrated.  But here there are decisions within decisions: udon or soba, hot or cold…  We even get to choose the volume of rice we want and receive a price reduction when we opt for a smaller size.  We tell the waitress we have to catch a bus and ask her to hurry.  The waitress merely smiles knowingly, turns and disappears, and reappears within a minute with one set menu, then seconds later with the other. We have a couple of donburis - one with two shrimp and one with shrimp, wasabi, and egg. Both are very good fast food. We pay up in plenty of time to catch the bus.  Total bill ¥1450

Visited April 2014