My boyfriend lives in the countryside, on the very edge of the Tokyo borders. If you were to take the train to Shinjuku from where he lives, it would take you about an hour. Since there is not much to do there, we usually meet here in Koenji, or in other more central areas of Tokyo, but every once in a while, I make the trek to Hachioji for a date, so that he doesn’t have to bear the long ride back home in the grossly overpacked train ^_-

I took one such trip last week. Bf had been sick for a little while, and he was finally doing better so he decided to take me to this soup curry shop he liked. Normally, I wouldn’t bother telling you about a lunch date in Hachioji, but this shop was so interesting and cute, I thought it was worth mentioning!

Actually, I don’t even know what it’s called since the name was all in kanji, but upon having a look at the website, I think it’s “Okushou”? I asked the bf after we left, but he said he didn’t know either. What?!? :p

The original restaurant is from Hokkaido, and apparently, this is the only other one on the mainland. Ooooh… But… why you had to choose Hajioji to open shop in???? :/

The restaurant was really really tiny. It seats about 12 people max, and bf said that it was always busy. Indeed, we went there on a Friday at around 1pm, and we had to wait about 40 minutes before we could sit down. They gave us menus and took our order while we were waiting though, so we didn’t actually have to wait that much longer for our food. One funny thing was that, upon taking a look at my pasty gaijin face, the cute little waitress exclaimed in Japanese “we have English menus!” then ran inside and came back out with a nicely typed English menu and proudly gave it to me, asking to let her know if there were any mistakes in it. lol. Turns out I was the very first person to try out their English menu, haha. Apparently, one of their former staff who was studying English at university had made it just for fun. Guess that tells you how often they’ve seen a foreigner in there…

When bf had told me we were going to a curry place, I thought he meant Indian (since he loves it so much) or Japanese (you know that gravy stuff…) but this place was neither. It was more of a “spicy soup” thing than curry, if you ask me…

I ordered one that said “cabbage and bacon” on the menu, while bf ordered the “vegetables” one. We only had to wait about 10-15 minutes or so before our food arrived. Two ginormous bowls full of delicious and healthy-looking food! Look at this! Yum!

Now if you don’t know, I am on a diet now, so going to places like this is really awesome because everything in there is healthy and diet-proof. You could even order “genmai” (brown rice) instead of normal rice, which was pretty sweet! I feel no shame in saying that I ate the whole entire thing.

The inside of the restaurant was really charming with its old-fashioned décor, and even the inside of the toilet was really cute! lol. 

One thing that was kinda annoying though, was that the booth where we were sitting had these two low-slung couches, so you were sitting really far away from the side of the table, which made it kinda awkward to eat. But other than that it was fine. Plus, every “booth” had different kinds of seats, and there was a counter too. Oh! And I forgot, this is the type of restaurants where you have to take your shoes off!! Which it would have been nice to know before I decided to wear high-heeled booths to go in… but whatever…

They also had a little notebook on our table, in which you were supposed to write comments about your meal, or draw pictures.

All in all, I had I had a really lovely experience. I’d definitely go there again if it wasn’t so damn far! If you’re ever in the area though, you should check it out!

Here’s a little map on how to get there from the station.

They have a really cute website too, if you can read Japanese…

http://okusyo.com/

Peace!

KC