Saying Goodbye To The Best Lil’ Restaurant in Kashihara

It’s about time I get around to writing about this place considering how much I’ve dined there in the last 13 months and the increased amount of suppers there in the last two months. When the cold set in the gas and electricity bills doubled. This, from my calculations, meant that cooking a meal was actually more expensive then going out to get one in a restaurant. Whereas one can purchase meat and vegetables to put a dent in your wallet and then have to factor in the cost of the double the cash prices to cook, not to mention double the light prices to cook by, you can just wander on down to the slew of eateries located outside of almost any Japanese train station and find less costly fair prepared for you. In the case of the Best Lil’ Restaurant in Kashihara, you can do so while looking at beautiful waitresses and listening to the sweet sounds of Jazz hovering over you.

I first found the place heading to the nearing cash machine to extract my weekly travel allowance. A sign with English text in Japan always stops me because it could either reveal important information or it could be a terrible translation which brings the funny. This sign told me that there was a restaurant above the madness inside the Pachinko parlor that I’ve missed in trying to avoid the madness inside the Pachinko parlor. From the looks of the teaser menu outside things would be listed in English and things looked pretty damn tasty. That was back in May and later that week I would stumble in and meet two older women that struck up a conversation with me. Since that first conversation there has been no others. Just me and my sit at the end of the long table listening to music and flirting with the passing waitresses.

The place is called Shirokiya but it might as well be ordained my Japanese Cheers as I’ve been there about as much as Norm. The inside atmosphere is very quiet during the week, enough that you can make out the trumpet and saxes piped in over the sound system and you can settle in for a relaxing meal of varied Japanese fair. Though there are tables you can sit out I discovered, in one of those language misunderstandings, that there is a sitting fee so I’ve always requested the long, bar-like table in the middle of the place usually finding myself in the final spot by the way sitting in front of this large piece of driftwood. This thing would fit in well in a Tim Burton film. They even decorated it for the holidays. I mentioned last time that the elevator that takes you here talks. Since then I discovered the motion sensor on the wall and have tried and failed to psyche it out probably only annoying the staff by making it constantly quip a thank you or a welcome. It’s a sad day when one can’t outsmart a talking elevator. I am very loyal to my restaurants. When I find a place I like I go there until I tire of it. Bridgehead Coffee back in Ottawa held my patronage until I left the city and even an ocean away I am pinning for a taste and will return when I return. I’m sure the other restaurants around the station are fine but I’m sticking to this lover until the end.


The waitresses here, as mentioned, must be hired from modeling agencies. Now, most Japanese women are beautiful. There’s some fine female genetics in this country. Here, in the Shirokiya, we are getting the pinnacle of beauty. Perfect shimmering black hair. Trim bodies. Smiles to melt you. Then again it could just be the uniform. I have to say I do like the attention I get from them when I walk in. It is hard not to see the chatter and quick looks towards me as I sit at my table. I don’t know, maybe they are making fun or maybe they are discussing my relative attractiveness to the usual bunch they get in there but it’s nice to be noticed by good looking women, I say. Chat and point away, ladies. When it comes to ordering they usual send over the girl who knows the most English. I tease. I flirt. She smiles. She takes my order. They never ask more then where I am from except this one time when one of them told me she was going to live in Montreal next year. That opened up a conversation about Canada and studying French where I could charm her with my lack of language skill in my countries second Native tongue, unnoticed by her. Why do I not pass over my email in times like these? These restaurant temptresses will be missed.

The food here is wonderful for the price although I was a bit turned off by the names when I first came here in May. You get dishes with English translations like “chicken cartilage”, “raw tuna belly” or “stewed beef tongue”. I’m sure that’s what it all is but dammed if munching down on stewed beef tongues wouldn’t churn my stomach. My favorite listing is “100% raw horse meat. Only the best horse meat for the best grommets!” No wonder why I choose the place with the English descriptions, huh? I have generally stuck to the same few dishes although at times I have been more adventurous. Always included in my order is the two dollar rice set. Here you get Japanese pickles, rice and Miso soup for a very reasonable price. And it’s pretty tasty, too. I expected the soup to taste like what one might find in a cup-o-noodle but with it’s floating cubes of tofu and generous pieces of vegetables the soup is pretty darn good. The pickles taste like Palmolive and the rice is just rice but the soup is pretty darn good. Added to this set I will add some chicken and pork on a stick, sort of like a one piece shish kabob. Well, that was my choice the first three months, I mean to say, before I discovered the kimchi and the okonomiyaki and the okonomiyaki with the okonomi part replaced by something else I can’t remember but is virtually the same thing without noodles and more vegetables. My stomach grumbles just thinking about it. These four dishes are my food rotation with sporadic adventures in other culinary goodies. If I had one complaint about this place is that it takes awhile for them to make the food but that’s the price you pay for quality. You want food in thirty seconds head on over to the arches. You want a nice kimchi still sizzling on the skillet when it comes to you then you wait your fifteen minutes and nurse your water while wondering what that waitress looks like without her apron.

With only a bit more time left here I’ve been going back to this place almost every second day. I’ve become as much of a fixture as the lamps and strange piece of drift wood. They really should just name the stool after me. I’m going to miss this place but a couple hundred Bridgehead coffees will go a long way in filling the void.