I’m writing about my trip to Tokyo retroactively since I have been home for a couple weeks now. I jotted my thoughts during the trip down to my notes so I still have a solid recollection of the trip. The flight wasn’t that bad, but I didn’t sleep the whole time like I thought I would.

Instead, I made a friend with the guy who sat next to me! Steven, a software developer from the Carolinas, decided to come to Japan for the first time! We talked a lot of the flight, and I was honestly just too excited to go to sleep like I wanted. Upon landing,  Steven and I exchanged Lines (SMS app) and went our separate ways for the night. I had scheduled a time to go to a Nomihoudai with Atarime, Souma and Muscle at 1930. A nomihoudai is an “all you can drink” restaurant limited by a time limit. The one we were going to had a 2 hour limit, and was a Yakiniku style grill of you cook the meat yourself, similar to Korean BBQ! but before that I had to get to the hotel. For whatever reason, I preprogrammed the wrong place on Google maps as my hotel. So when I got to the hotel, I checked in online and found myself absolutely lost and wandering through this random hotel looking for what seemed remotely like a “hostel” area that I booked. After an embarrassing amount of time, I re-looked at the address from my confirmation and realized I was 7 minutes away from my actual hotel. Oops! Thankfully I checked in to the right place, threw my stuff in my little room and dipped!

After that I met the homies at the Nomihoudai! The restaraunt name was called “肉善”, or “Meat Good” when roughly translated.

You’ll notice this looks a lot like Korean BBQ in America! It very much is similar. You simply wave down the server, point to what food items you’d like on the menu, and they bring it out to you. Easy Peezy!

After a fun night of drinking and eating with the gang, I called it a night and settled back into my hostel, ready to tackle the next day!