It had been a long day leaving Hiroshima in the morning and dodging the typhoon, spending lunchtime in Fukuoka exploring temples, arriving in Kumamoto and exploring the Castle and feudal lords residence. I now wanted to find somewhere nice to sit down and eat a nice japanese meal and have some cake seeing as today was my birthday Luckily my hotel was located a couple of blocks from a shopping arcade. I figured going inside there and seeing what I could find. It was a quiet downtown on a sunday evening but the arcade was bustling From my last trip to Osaka and Kyoto last year I remember they tended to have these long covered shopping streets where many retail stores and restaurants could be found. When I went in it stretched for quite a distance. I didnt see many restaurants so decided to continue exploring. After a while it reached a traffic intersection and continued on the other side. It also turned and stretched in another direction across a city block. I always have problem with food and couldnt figure out what half the stuff was at first and have restrictions on the things I can eat so was looking for noodles or fish. As I was getting too hungry I just decided to go into one restaurant and try and pick something. It said Udon which is soup and noodles. Luckily this was a self serve style restaurant. You go along the counter picking tempura items and choose your type of udon noodle soup at the end. These types of places are always deceptive as the more you add the more your bill goes up. I knew that but as it was my birthday I didnt care and wanted a good meal. My total came to 980Y ($11.70) for six tempura items with the soup. What I thought was fish balls was actually eggs so a bit strange as I've never had tempura boiled eggs before. The rest was tempura squid and vegetables, same as stuff you can get in korea. It wasnt the best birthday meal but I couldnt really find anywhere else that had stuff I could eat. Then I wanted to try to find somewhere to get some cake. There were lots of pachinko arcades that were very common in Tokyo and most cities. The noise did my head in when you walk in and smoking is allowed so its quite smoky. I took some photos but was told to stop. I ended up just buying a cup of custard from a convenience store as my dessert and went back to watching the typhoon on tv. I found another good channel NHK-G which shows good historical dramas in japanese.