I have a couple purposes for posting this entry. Primarily, I want to explain how to order food in a restaurant in Japan when you don't speak Japanese. It is remarkably easy. Nearly all Japanese food-selling places in all price ranges have either menus with photos and/or plastic representations of the food. If you have a choice made, it is considered polite to walk your server over to the plastic replicas and point one out.
Most food places in Japan do not take credit or debit cards. You will need cash. In the case of this ice-cream shop, the items cost around US$10 each. It was high by American typical prices, but the ice-cream specialties served were large. We made a meal of them. The woman making our treats turned out duplicates of the plastic items on show.
My ice-cream treat included Kellogg's corn flakes, Jell-O, marshmallows, and candies. Other items included Jell-O and soy beans. You aren't in Kansas! Well, there is the Jell-O, which is popular both in Japan and in Kansas.
Ordering and constructing our treats took about 15 minutes, so I would call this semi-fast food. We got the giggles in the middle of our meal. It’s something about being in a room full of happy Japanese teenagers!
Other food shops in this location offered Italian food, including pizza; McDonald's hamburgers; and seafood.
Everywhere we went in Japan we felt very welcome and quite happy. Hospitality is an art in Japan.