The Food Courts at Japanese Depato

We love Japanese department stores, or depato, as they are called in Japanese. Over the past couple of days, we visited the fancy Tokyu depato in Shibuya, and Keio and Halc in Shinjuku. Tree and I marveled at the enormous display of cosmetics and perfumes. But, most importantly, the basements of Japanese depato usually have grocery stores and vast food courts.

After visiting the observation deck on the 45th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office (the most impressive city hall I have ever seen), we went to Keio depato for lunch. The food courts in depato are not ordinary food courts. Imagine the basement of Macy's in New York full of the prepared foods, fruit, vegetables, pastries and chocolate.

We wandered around the basement of Keio for 45 minutes looking at bento boxes filled with sushi, sashimi, Japanese vegetables and tofu pockets; meat and vegetable gyoza (Japanese dumplings); rice balls filled with eel, salmon, spicy roe, shiso, pickles, and pickled plum; futomaki (giant rolls of rice filled with vegetables and wrapped in seaweed); prepared chicken, beef and pork; green, meat and vegetable salads; individually wrapped pastries; cakes, custards and tarts; whole and cut up pineapple, persimmon, Asian pears, apples, grapes, and plums; all kinds of milk and dark chocolate; and more. We were in heaven and bought way too much to eat, but buying food at a depato is pretty inexpensive and the variety cannot be beat. The food was excellent, in case you are wondering about the quality.

After making our purchases at Keio, we wandered over to Halc depato to check out their selection and find seating. For drinks, Maki bought his favorite ion drink, Pocari Sweat (don't ask me what an ion drink is, that's what the label says and yes, that's the name), I got water and an iced chocolate, Jonathan got hard lemonade, Tree got hard mango juice (hard, as in having a little bit of liquor), and Kevin got a beer. CJ, by the way, spent the morning and part of the morning with Maki's parents, visiting great grandma Kato and having lunch.

When we take the train to Kyoto tomorrow, we plan to visit the basement of Tokyu and load up on bento boxes for the ride. Yum!