Food We Ate : Food From Depachika

Sometimes, when we are too lazy or too tired to go out for dinner after a long day sightseeing, we opted to bring back food and eat in the comfort of our hotel room. Usually, instead of buying food at a restaurant to-go, we would just head to the nearest supa or depachika for our dinner.

What's depachika? A depachika is the basement floor of a Japanese department store. Depachika is short for "depaato-chika shokuhin uriba" which means department store basement food-selling place. You can find various type of booths selling groceries, delicatessen foods, liquors, deserts and sweets at these depachika, and food stuff to buy as omiyage too. Depachika at major department stores such as Mitsukoshi, Matsuzakaya and Matsuya located in major areas of Tokyo, like Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ginza, Ueno, Ikebukuro and Asakusa are a sight to behold. Do visit one these department stores if you are in Japan. Sure beats buying a burger from McD and eat it in your room.

Those bento meals sold at Jusco here in KL, pale in comparison to what is offered at a Japanese depachika.

I got this idea about writing this post on depachika, and then I realised one thing. I never tried taking photo while browsing in a supermarket or department store! I should do it next time, I guess. But in the meantime, no photos of the basement floor!

Anyway, we've gotten pretty nice dinner  bought at either depachika or supa. I remember fondly of a nice paella I bought from Queen's Isetan in Kinshicho and how we spent a lot of money going crazy buying way too much food at Seibu/Tobu. Or the time we literally had a free lunch just by sampling food items at Isetan in Kyoto.

Here's Raimie enjoying his dinner bought from Ito Yokado. We got it  at almost closing time, and got a pretty nice discounts for our dinner. Thrifty people like us won't say no to discounts!

Department stores in Japan do close early so our discounted dinner was bought not that late at night.We sure wouldn't want to let Raimie suffer hunger!