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We go to this restaurant all the time. It got Tex-Mex food ... but with a Japanese twist. I notice that the restaurants here like to do that --- put their own twist on old favourites. Although, this restaurant does indeed change the original recipes to suit the local tastes, this particular restaurant is a gem amongst Japanesified western restaurants. It's spacious for one thing. And it's solidly built; the inside support beams will attest to the solid foundation of this building. The food is true remind-you-of-home comfort food. The outside doesn't look like much but it's going for the Old West abondoned look. The restaurant is called Zest and apparently, it has about half a dozen locations around Tokyo. The newest addition can be found in Hiroo, but that location only has burgers and none of the other Tex-Mex food items on the Ebisu menu. I haven't been to the other locations to test out their food or question their waitstaff, but I do frequent this one regularly.
I know that during the weeks, for lunch, they have English speaking waitstaff and the manager speaks English very well, but by his accent, I would guess him to be of Hispanic language origin. Most of the other staff are Japanese, but are super friendly. They are always willing to accommodate your special needs. If you order the beef steak jambalaya, they actually will cut up the egg (they like to put fried, sunny-side eggs on everything here) and mix it up in your rice jambalaya dish for you. Once we sat beside a rather large party for brunch on the weekend and we saw their spicy chicken wings being mixed up right there in front of them at their table. Since they ordered what seemed to be a rather large amount of wings, this table required 2 waitstaff to mix up the wings for them. They sang a song while they were mixing.
On most weekends that we've been by, the first floor has been rented for private parties, but the 3rd floor is open. On those days, the hostess will greet you at the front entrance, but direct you to the elevator within the garage so that you can get to the 3rd floor.
All floors are spacious. I never feel like I'm cramped between tables. And for all the tall people out there, the ceilings are also high. The lifts are small-ish as is the standard here in Japan.
I don't work for the place and the restaurant didn't pay me to write about them. I just love going because, except for the Japanese staff, and the location, it's mostly a western feel and reasonable lunch fare prices.
Ebisu station's summer festival happened on the first weekend of August. I've been so busy with learning Japanese that I haven't been diligent about keeping up this blog. However, I found out about the festival quite by chance. We were sitting in a cafe restaurant in YGP, having dinner before trying to watch Blueberry Nights at the Twilight Cinema festival, when the lady beside us, suddenly and uncharacteristically of the Japanese people, decided to strike up a conversation with us. "Excuse me, but where are the two of you from?" was her first question. English wasn't quite that good, but half the sentence was in Japanese so I'm taking artistic freedom to translate it all. I responded with, "Canada." "Both of you are from Canada?" I guess it's that whole Asian look that I have that throws people off. "Yes, both of us." I switch to Japanese. She's surprised. She starts asking all sorts of questions in rapid-fire Japanese. "Sumimasen, motto yukkuri hanashite kudasai. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu." I quickly let her know that I can't speak that quickly and could she kindly oblige. She does. That's when she tells us about the Ebisu street festival right outside the West exit of the station. "It's happening tonight after 6 pm and tomorrow night as well." We tell her we might show up. She says we should go to experience it. It's so lively and fun - nigiyaka de tanoshii desu. Plus, she's dancing during the festival. So there it was. The plug for herself and her dance troupe. We say thanks for the info and we would definitely try to get there after our movie was finished. Then we left as I had finished my mango smoothie. Delicious btw. We walked back to watch the movie, but YGP was so packed that it was uncomfortable in most places and the best view we could get was a standing spot only. I didn't want to stand there for more than 2.5 hours to watch the movie. At this point it was 6 pm. We decide to head towards the station and check out the matsuri. There were tonnes of people. There were tonnes of food stands. I had never seen so much yakisoba all in one place before. I should have taken a photo. As it was, I only had my keitai with me that night and I managed to get only this one almost clear, blind shot of the dancing and the central dance stage. Apparently, this is the same setup that most machi festivals adopt in the summer. My husband went to the one at Oosaki station just last week, and he confirmed the same stage, music and dancing occured. However, the sponsor was San Rio - of Hello Kitty, or Kittychan fame - and they were giving out small San Rio imprinted souvenir dolls and fans. My husband refused to get one for me as he would have to be seen coming back home on the train with the incriminating goods. I think if he really loved me and was resourceful, he would have rented a 5 year for the train ride home. I don't want much eh? :-D
I just returned from Yebisu Garden Place (YGP) where they were holding one of their Twilight Cinema movie events for the summer. Tonight's feature film was the documentary 'SiCKO' by Michael Moore. It took me about 3 minutes to get home. We arrived, on foot, about 25 minutes late for the movie after having dinner at a nearby Thai restaurant. We had to stand beside a pillar to the left side of the outdoor screen for the entire movie due to the popularity of the movie/festival. And since we were late, it might have been considered slightly rude by Japanese standards to intrude on the seated patrons to try to squeeze onto benches where only 2 people sat.
I love YGP; there's always something going on there and it's so incredibly clean. I have been known to accidentally, walk into the line of sight for a modeling shoot, a commercial, or DJ promotion of some sort when there is an "event" or thing going on. But tonight there was no film crew or camera man, just a projection man and he was already housed and elevated, so there was no way my head was getting into the line of sight of the film.
The Twilight Cinema event is running over the weekends from now until mid-August, which is basically the peak summer weekend nights. The venue has set up a large out-door screen and seating area, as well as a movie food stand to the right side of the screen. Even if it rains, it's a nice place to watch one of the foreign, indie films on-screen because the permanent canopy shields you from most of the rain. If it's gusty, you might feel some mist spray. All movies are sub-titled in Japanese.
For now, my plan is to go out for the English and French speaking movies. While I can struggle through the Japanese kanji, it would be limiting in my overall enjoyment if I could only translate the first word (usually the subject or object, depending on who is talking to whom) and the final end word which is always the verb (except for the cases where it is some kind of exclamatory interjection or post-positional word). Apparently, if you speed read like this, the brain can fill in the rest of the sentence. With my limited knowledge of actual Japanese adjectives and adverbs and connecting words, it may prove to be a confusing way to watch a movie. I believe Friday and Saturday nights' movies were in German and Chinese, respectively. We skipped them. Passing by at about 5:45 on Saturday afternoon, I noticed that a lineup was about 30 people deep had already begun to form for a 6:45-ish start time. Ideally, it would be best to sit on one of the benches they provide that are strategically placed between the screen and the sound systems for best sound quality and personal comfort. We initially tried to view the movie by watching from the 'balcony' in the surrounding atria but found that the sound quality was not that great. Difficult to understand in fact and a trees branches was in our line of sight. However, once we moved to the end of the covered ceiling, the sound got better, but there is still a hint of fuzziness in the words. In the end, we descended onto the ground floor and stood beside the pillar. Surprisingly there were a large number of Japanese people sitting on the floor beside the roped off bench area. That floor in YGP is cleaned about 4 times an hour during business hours - so it's a clean seat albeit not a soft one. The smarter people saved room for dessert and sat in one of the outdoor terrace tables of the cafe restaurants owned by Mitsukoshi (more on this store in another post). Next time, we'll have coffee there for the 2.5 hours of the movie.
I was so engrossed in the movie, that I was quite surprised when it was over. It was nothing like the long, boring documentaries that we used to watch in grade school. Michael Moore's movies are just so entertaining, satirical even. There were several laugh-out-loud parts where I think it may have only been us that were laughing out loud. Since there's so much inside information, insinuation, and reading between the lines, I would think it a very difficult movie for a non-native speaker to absorb and enjoy. I would hate to watch a movie like this in Japanese. It would just hurt my head. At the end of the movie and start of the credits, I had expected the crowd to clap as they do at the end of the movies at TIFF, but they didn't. Maybe it's a cultural thing and it isn't polite.
As the credits began to roll on the large screen (which by the way, waved and waggled a bit in the wind), I looked up and noticed that the sky had morphed into a pretty dark indigo hue whilst I was engrossed in the film. I also noticed that while it was hot and humid just a few hours earlier, it was now still hot, but cooler and breezy. I could the wisps of the hair that had escaped my ponytail moving freely in the breeze. And at that instant I laughed. I just realized that this would be the closest I may ever get to fulfilling one of my goals to attend an outdoor drive-in movie. There are no more in Ottawa or Toronto and a few years ago I had heard of one that was about 2 hours outside Toronto but it's a little ways to go for a drive-in movie, even in one of my most determined mindsets. Here, there was no automobile, no grass, no mosquitoes, no smell of freshly popped popcorn and for us there was also no seat, but plenty of potted and manicured trees and flowers, a beautiful breezy Tokyo summer night and lots of Japanese people staring intently at the screen. In the bustling city of Tokyo under a canopy of stars, and on an intricately patterned brick and marble floor, and, for us, a large pink marble pillar to support our weight, I managed to experience a movie in the natural outdoor setting of one of Tokyo's prettiest outdoor plazas.
The coverage of universal health care comparisons was great. He pokes fun at the current health care system in the US while highlighting the real pain of real people. He visits Canada, England and France and even forbidden Cuba, and exposes the system and debunks some myths about the quality of these foreign healthcare systems. The ending was great. You don't expect Michael Moore to give you a fairy tale ending, but I think this might be the closest that he could dare to venture toward that end. After all, he's not Disney. He is however, human, as are the doctors, people, healthcare practitioners and patients that he interviews throughout the film. Michael Moore, where were you when I was 12?
Ever Since arriving in Tokyo last year, one of the biggest inconveniences I am finding, is that shops don't actually open until 11 am. That's right, most reputable places of business do not open their shop doors until just before the lunch hour. Most gyms don't open until 9 or 10 am. Although, there is one in downtown Tokyo that is open at 7 am I believe - The Club at Yebisu Garden. But this convenience will cost you. Bigtime. Think - "an arm and a leg". The sign-up administration fee alone may shock you into next week; it may be wise to have a de-fib device at hand just in case. Most mornings in the Ropponggi/Hiroo area (an area of Tokyo brimming with Expats), you see gaijin stay-at-moms/dads in track suits just waiting for their sports club of choice to open by sitting at a Starbucks or other Starbucks-like cafe.
I find this somewhat amusing. By "this", I mean the situation where for all their work ethic and international reputation for working long hours, one of the simplest Western expectations for a good morning working, cannot be fulfilled by early rising Japanese. However, "this" may also be construed as the situation whereby gym-goers, supposed health nuts, are sitting around having coffee while they lay waiting for their morning routine trot on the tread mill.
Other than gyms, most shopping cannot be completed before 11 am either. You have to wait for the department stores and many smaller businesses to open at 11 am or rush back home after a long day at the office to make it before their doors close at 8 pm. The exception to this would be the konbini's and other strategically located businesses near train stations. There are other exceptions but not nearly enough.
Just one of my many idle observations...
