Japanese set lunch/dinner

I've just got time for a very quick post today, I've got many things to do and we're probably off to Kamakura tomorrow. What you can see in the picture is a Japanese set meal. These came to my rescue when I was put in fear for my financial health by the somewhat higher prices to be found in Japan. However, you can get these set meals for a very reasonable price. For example, this one was bought at a place in Shinjuku station (a main terminus in Tokyo and one of the most bewildering bowl-of-spaghetti stations I've ever been to), so not the cheapest area, and it came to about 1000 yen (£7ish). At my work you can get something similar for about 360 yen, which is roughly £2.20 (!), although it's obviously rather less mouth-watering, being from an institutional cafeteria.

In the picture above is a bowl of rice with breaded chicken covered with egg, a bowl of miso soup (a salty broth) and some pickled ginger. This is called katsudon (カツ丼).These bowls are one of my favourite kinds of set thing to buy, they're known as don or donburi (look out for this Kanji: 丼), which actually just means bowl. They are cheap and delicious and come in multitude of different varieties. They'll basically put anything on rice and sell it to you for a very reasonable price. For example, today I had what seemed to be a load of sashimi offcuts on rice for about £3 (the yen seems to be fluctuating quite a lot in price right now, so apologies for my varying estimates), and I often have gyudon (牛丼), which is thinly sliced beef and onion that sometimes includes some raw egg. These are very filling and tend to be available at almost any Japanese style eatery, including the ubiquitous ramen (ラーメン) joints where people wolf down steaming bowls of nourishing noodles often while standing, punctuating their tireless dash through life.

Do try one if you get the chance, you won't regret it.

I'll write more about Japanese convenience food soon, and apologies to anyone who reads my Japanese and finds it littered with mistakes, I'm still getting my head around the Japanese phonetic systems and the input method on my computer.