I'm in Japan at the moment, for the Liberty Alliance plenary meetings which start tomorrow. More on that topic as the week progresses, but in the meantime here's one of those "first-time visitor in Japan" posts. It's fascinating to experience how not being able to read 90% of public information basically reduces you to the societal level of a four-year-old. Instead of relying on textual information, you have to look for other clues which might tell you which street you're on, or which metro station comes next, or what kind of food you're about to get in a restaurant.
So far, I've worked out (albeit with some help) that the Japanese characters for "yakitori" (grilled stuff on little skewers) include one which looks like some stuff on a skewer.
Also, the Japanese characters for "ramen" (noodles in broth) include one which looks more or less like an "X", depending on which character set is used, how the characters are written/printed, and a couple of other variables, including this counter-intuitive one: a lot of restaurants advertise their speciality by means of slender, vertically-mounted banners... which is fine, provided the wind's blowing the right way. If it isn't, all the characters are backwards and good luck to you. Unless it's a nice "X", of course, in which case you're probably still OK.
Japanese food can also have a reputation for being expensive - and I know in some cases that's amply justified. It can be cheap too, though. At lunch today I gave up long before the ramen did, and it cost me under $5. I'm not even going to try to find a "pound" sign on this keyboard... but about three quid.
I expect the rest of the week will abound in 'random food encounters'...
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