Yozenya

Rating: OK
Meal:  Dinner
Price: 2700 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Steak
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No

Second place I ate at at Narita Airport.  Much better steak but also much more expensive.  Averages out to ok.

Yanma

Rating: OK
Meal:  Dinner
Price: 1500 yen
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Steak
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No

Picked relatives at the airport last night and had some time before to try a couple of places out.  The first is this steak spot...I got the largest amount of meat possible, a 200g steak.  It was just ok.

Spyro's

Rating: OK
Meal:  Dinner
Price: 3310 yen
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Grilled haloumi cheese, greek salad, yogurt chicken
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No

Met a friend near Kamata once again and we ended up at a Greek restaurant nearby.  He wasn't keen on eating, so I only I ate.  Ordered a bit more in case he wanted some, but he didn't.

The food was just so so, not great.  The yogurt chicken was especially disappointing for its lack of flavor.  It needed salt at least and none was to be found.  Grilled haloumi is impossible to mess up, and greek salad easy to make so while those were nice, they were not impressive.

Given the prices and quality I wouldn't recommend this spot generally for Greek.  Not that we have much choice here in Japan...

Cocktail Works

Rating: Very good
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 10,000 yen
Dishes:  Two drinks, two dishes
Payment: Credit cards accepted
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No

Not being fans of bars in general I don't review them much here.  But on our last evening in Karuizawa my wife and I were in the mood for a nicer restaurant, and we had seen this amazing looking bar earlier in the day when we happened by and bought some whiskey and gin from the very nicely supplied store next to it.  When we couldn't get into our first restaurant of choice, we came back to try the food here.

The bar itself is gorgeous, and extremely well stocked with top shelf whiskeys and other liquor.  The food menu is short, but well put together, and they cook everything right there behind the bar somehow.  Everything is expensive, but they aren't pretending it will be anything else, and luckily it was the time for a nice evening out.

My wife had the chicken, I had the beef.  Hers was the better tasting dish overall, but mine wasn't have bad either.  The only pity was it was quite small.  Our drinks were excellent too, with my wife realizing she really quite likes a Martini, which makes sense given her taste for gin (we bought a hops infused gin earlier from the other side of the store).  I had a rare-find Laphroig whiskey, which came on a hand chipped ball of ice.  So good!

The overall price was eye-popping, but definitely a pleasant experience and a real treat.

Ajihei

Rating: Very good
Meal: Dinner for 2
Price: 4000 yen
Dishes:  Several dishes
Payment: Cash only
English Menu: No
Smoking: No?

Karuizawa is a small tourist town, and everything seems to shut down after 6pm.  We were there with a couple of friends after 6 and needed dinner, so we wandered down the "ginza" shopping street looking for anything open.  The only thing we found that time was this chinese restaurant.

Luckily we had a Chinese native speaker with us from the same region as the owners, so they were very kind and made some special order dishes.  My wife and I stuck with some basics, and I had the scrambled eggs with tomatoes dish I knew I could count on.  It was actually quite tasty, as was everything else we had.  Definitely recommended if you are there late and need some grub.