And shabu-shabu for dinner

This evening, I visited a IBM friend who’s here on assignment. His office is at IBM Asia Pacific HQ, very near the Roppongi-Itchome subway station. After a brief stop there, we walked over to Shabuzen for dinner. Sha-buzen in Boston advertises itself as “inexpensive, healthy, delicious, and fun”; Shabuzen in Roppogni hits three out of those four adjectives.

The food was delicious, especially the Kobe beef, which we had as part of our second order. It was absolutely wonderful, and made the premium domestic beef (the next-to-the-top option) seem like McDonald’s in comparison — and I’d thought the premium domestic beef was awfully good when I first tasted it.

And it was probably healthy — at least we cooked up (and ate) many vegetables. And it was certainly fun.

But inexpensive? No. The base meal would have been &165;4800 each, but when you add a couple of beers at &165;500, and the extra orders…well, let’s just say I’ve never dined in five figures before (even if in yen). On the other hand, the all-you-can-eat Kobe beef dinner was over &165;15,000 per person, so I guess what we had was comparatively inexpensive.

I’d go back cheerfully.