Eating lunch alone together

This is one of my favorite lunch places. I just realized I had no idea what it's called - I just think of it as "the place with the yellow flags out front near the office.*" And now that I look at the free point card I got there, it turns out to be one of those Japanese words that you still get wrong even when you (think you) can read it. The name is the characters for "small" and "town" -　小町 - and then cafeteria - 食堂. Aw, cute. Small town restaurant. Case closed, right? Nah. It seems "komachi" means "the town beauty" or "belle." Supposedly. So then why is the logo an old-school sushi chef giving a dead fish what for? Ah, anyway. None of this was the point.

The point is that I like this place because the owners are friendly and you can get whatever you like from the refrigerator case right inside the sliding front door. The kid next to me had fresh tuna and octopus sashimi with miso soup, and the guy across from me had three different deep fried mystery lumps doused in brown sauce with a pile of white rice. (I could have put a hand into the middle of each of their trays without straightening my elbows. I didn't, of course. But they are that close. Why are you looking at me like that?) I always grab a plate of fish marinated in miso and ginger and a veggie side or two, then go to the back counter to get some soup and a bowl of "health rice" with 10 types of grains and beans mixed in.

A kerchiefed motherly type whisks away whatever food you have that should be served warm and heats it up while you squeeze in at a communal table, either the long one in the middle or a four-seater next to the wall. She finds you and sets down your food and the bill while you grab chopsticks out of a box and hot tea and water from pitchers spaced along the table. There are small flat-screen TVs propped up on each side of the room tuned to some chatty afternoon variety show. I don't like TVs in bars or restaurants usually, but here it lends a living-room sort of feel and makes all the elbow-to-elbow solo diners seem less solitary.

I've only been at lunch, but it's open year round, 24/7 .

Bonus: Something in the restaurant - the phone? a notification that people are waiting by the register? - plays a MIDI version of Pomp and Circumstance. It does. Why would I make that up?

*Note to the tall: my coworker calls it "the place with the tiny tables that are impossible to sit at."

Komachi shokudo 2-17-14 Shinkawa, Chuo-ku, Tokyo and 5 other Tokyo locations.