Unahachi

Rating: Not great
Meal:  Lunch
Price:  2500 yen
Payment:  Cash only
Dishes: Unagidon Teishoku
English Menu:No

Smoking:Yes

Cooking rice the old fashioned way

This is probably one of the most Japanese looking places along Dobuita Street, a pretty seedy street that runs parallel to the base.  This is where most of the bars that the sailors frequent exist.  It can be pretty crazy at night.  But during the day many of these places are open for lunch and if you can ignore the raunchy atmospheres there's some ok food to be had.

Unahachi is a bit different though as it's not a place that goes out of its way to attract the sailors.  There's no english menu, no one speaks english there, and they specialize in unagi:  roasted eel.  Needless to say, I've never seen another gaijin in there.  Which at first made me think "Awesome!" until I ate there a few times.  Time to see if it has changed...

Is that a chicken foot in your soup?

Instead of trying to decipher the "menu" (placards hanging from above the seating area), I just asked for an unagidon, knowing they would almost certainly have something.  A few minutes later I had a bowl of rice topped with unagi, a bowl of soup with what I swear were two deboned chicken toes and part of the pad, and a couple of tsukimono (pickled things) dishes.  I'm told excellent unagi is worth the price, but that must be more than the 2500 yen this dish ended up costing me.  I was quite unimpressed with all of the ingredients.  Nothing was a pleasant surprise, just quite blah.  There's another even more expensive place in town that I'll have to try to see if there is such a thing as mind blowing unagi out there.  But this place isn't it.