4th of July & Ninjas

To celebrate America's birthday, we checked out the 4th of July festival on base with Bern's cousin Melissa & her family. The carnival-like atmosphere included games for kids, a petting zoo, live music & of course great food. And no 4th of July celebration would be complete without a fireworks show which really lit up the Yokosuka summer sky.

 

The following day, Melissa & her husband, Raul, took us to a Ninja inspired restaurant in Tokyo. The outside of the restaurant was very inconspicuous to really go along with the whole Ninja theme.    

  

 

Once inside, a ninja appeared from a secret door to escort us to our table. We had to first walk through another secret door ourselves into a dark, cave like setting with very narrow passageways. During our trek, we seemed to hit a dead end when the Ninja yelled out something in Japanese (maybe a secret password) then a draw bridge appeared to take us through the final leg of our journey. Really cool way to start the evening! The menus were on blackened scrolls about 4 feet long

 

 

After we ordered, we were looking around & noticed a small nameplate above Melissa's seat. We took a closer look and discovered that famed director Steven Spielberg actually sat at this very table a few years ago.

 

 

 

Obviously all the dishes were "Ninja" inspired, take our appetizer for instance where the cracker-chips were made to look like Shuriken (Ninja throwing stars)

 

 

 

Overall, it was a fun & interesting dinner experience which is ultimately what you pay for. The food was good but overpriced to say the least. But I'm really glad we got the opportunity to get out of Yokosuka & eat somewhere really unique. There is also a Ninja theme park here in Japan as well so this is certainly not the last time you'll be reading about these ancient Japanese warriors on this blog!

 

    

 

We hope you had a great 4th of July weekend as well readers!