We normally eat three times a day with “munching” taking place regularly during the day.  One of the reasons we like cruising so much is there is never a decision of where to eat.  You go to the dining room and chose what you want from the menu.  If you don’t like it, you ask for another meal.  If you’re really hungry, you ask for two meals. Seems pretty simple.  In Japan, we’re on our own and that’s fine. We know what we like and there are sites that provide ratings of restaurants so you know where to increase your odds of a good meal.

Our last night in Takayama, we chose to eat at a Spanish restaurant.  It had good reviews and the night before we were going to eat there, I went in to see if I could get a reservation.  The restaurant is on the second floor, so I went up the stairs, Meg didn’t follow, she had had enough stairs for the day.  As I opened the door, I fell in love with the place and knew I wanted to eat there.  I met the owner and had a table booked for 18:00 the next day.

Defective Wine Bottle

When we went for dinner, we were greeted with a big smile and shown the best table in the house.  We ordered a bottle of Italian wine, I know it was a Spanish restaurant, but the Italian wine did look better.  It did not disappoint.  We both secretly thought, can we take the other half of the bottle home because we never drink a full bottle at home.  We ordered two appetizers and two main courses and the food came in stages, there is only one cook, the owner. The last dish to come was a main and somehow that bottle of red wine was empty.  We both looked at each other and burst out laughing.  Did the owner sneak a glass for himself?  Did we spill some?  Was this bottle defective and leaking? We had to ‘fess-up, we were the culprits.  I think it was the fastest we have ever consumed an entire bottle of red wine and yet neither one of us seemed intoxicated.  If we are ever back in Takayama, we’ll head back to that restaurant.

Some of other meals in Takayama included a burger at a burger joint – Hida beef is a “thing” so we decide to try a burger. We had been three full weeks in Japan without a Canadian meal and didn’t feel we were “cheating”.  Besides, Takayama is in the centre of Japan so the fish is not a fresh as on the coast.  We also tried a Nepali restaurant.  There are a number of Nepali restaurants in Japan, most of which specialize in Japanese/Indian curry which has always been quite good.  This place, although well reviewed, was on the lower end of our Nepali restaurants in Japan.

We’ll keep updating on our adventures and travels.

Thanks for reading 🙂