Great India

Posted on 2006/02/08 11:51:30 (February 2006).

[Tuesday 7th February]
It had in fact snowed over the previous night, so I awoke to see an eye-pleasing sprinkling covering the rooftops of the buildings behind our apartment. It was pretty lack lustre as snowstorms go though, and much of it had melted away even by lunchtime.

Met up with Chie at Shinjuku station after work, as we both fancied a curry to cure our weekday blues. Went to a branch of Great India - a small chain which we had previously been to in Ikebukuro. The place itself was a bit of a dive, but then that's just like a lot of great Indian restaurants are back home. The food however was really good, just like last time. In fact I think we ordered more or less the same dishes off the menu. After dinner we went for a quick drink at an Irish pub I occasionally frequent in that area, and then wended our way home.

Quick Q John, from your "guides to local restaurants and pubs in Japan" it does appear, at least to me, that Japan seems very multicultural in its variety of Western-style eateries. There seems to be lots of Indian, Italian, Irish pubs and others I have forgotton. Is this just Tokyo or do you just gravitate towards these places because you know you can get a decent( and real ) veggy meal ? Or are there actually quite alot of these places - they seem quite popular from your blogging - I don't know why but I had the impression that the japanese would tend to not have these kinds of places and where they did occur they would be extremely niche!

Posted by Kev at 2006/02/08 24:54:43.

Looking at Kev's post I think that between me and you we could write a guide to pubs and restaurants in Japan, what do you think about it John? We could put the business card, addresses and so on, a quick description, rating and of course we can go back bragging about the good advertising and scrounging free meals!

Posted by Lox at 2006/02/08 13:12:39.

Yea Kev it is largely because I do gravitate towards these sorts of places - as it is really hard to get anything vegetarian in Japanese restaurants generally. Indian is always a dead cert, and Italian is usually a fairly safe bet.

Italian restaurants are very common, although often heavily Japanese in style (none of them are runny by the stereotypical semi-Italians you get in Italian restaurants back in the UK!).

Indian restaurants seem to be growing in popularity, but certainly there are not nearly as many as in the UK.

Middle Eastern food (Turkish / Lebanese / whatever) is even rarer - I have almost never seen anywhere like that outside of Tokyo.

Posted by John at 2006/02/08 13:16:33.

Sorry for the confusing use of "runny" there in the second paragraph - that clearly shoud read "run".

Posted by John at 2006/02/08 13:17:40.

The stumbling block whenever I start thinking about this is that I don't have the right framework. Ideally I need some perl/ASP/whatever scripts that allows me to add/edit and manage the entries for each place. It would be good to have a standard layout for each one - maybe a few pictures, some description, some location information. It might be nice for people to be able to add comments too...

On several occasions I have started writing such an ASP script, but never seem to get round to finishing it.

For example, my very short London pub guide:

/john/pubs/section00001.html

Posted by John at 2006/02/08 13:28:05.

Oh and I had a go at doing something bilingual (English and Japanese) using XML and XSLT:

/john/japanguide/

Again, started but not finished.

Posted by John at 2006/02/08 13:36:28.

Oh and I had a go at doing something bilingual (English and Japanese) using XML and XSLT:

/john/japanguide/

Again, started but not finished.

Posted by John at 2006/02/08 13:36:52.

I understand what you mean, but I think that an XML/XSTL format might be better as we can change the layout and re-use the info as we please. As for the bi-lingual thing I wouldn't know I am not able to write correctly in Japanese, but Chie might come in handy there...
I think that between the two of us we could write a good eat/drink guide, nothing expecially fancy, but something that might be useful for people coming to Tokyo.
There aren't many unofficial guides on the net...

Posted by Lox at 2006/02/08 15:36:07.

Basic layout could be:
1. picture of the front
2. picture inside
3. picture of food (if possible)
4. Description, rating
5. Where to find it (google earth?)
6. Comments

Date Created/Last updated -

Posted by Lox at 2006/02/08 15:39:33.

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