Chinese Food in Japan

I had a hankerin' tonight for some Chinese food - you know quick, down-and-dirty, cheap Chinese take-out.  Since the only Chinese I've tasted since being on island was from Manchu Wok which is located in the food court on base (next to Taco Bell and Burger King), I was wanting to branch out a little and see how the Japanese did Chinese.  After all, Okinawa has a strong Chinese influence so in theory there should be some good Chinese restaurants here.  In theory.

I found a recommendation for a restaurant called Peter's Place - not very Chinese sounding, but maybe Peter is a common name in China that I hadn't heard of before - and headed across town to order some yummies.  What I found was a decrepit building with a faded sign indicating this was Peter's Place.  I entered the building and walked past a room full of dank Chinese antiques with a sign announcing "30% off ALL".  I walked past that room and up a dark, musty staircase toward the sound of a lonely sanshin (a native instument that's a simple guitar).  To my right at the top of the stair case was a near empty room with a solitary man sitting at a low table overlooking the street absently stroking his sanshin and waiting.  For who?  Me, apparently.  For this was Peter of the namesake restaurant and he did look a whole lot more Chinese than his name would suggest.

I entered the restaurant and was handed a menu to make my selection.  It looked interesting (wink, wink) with choices like beef and broccoli, beef and vegetables, beef and noodles, beef and rice, curry beef.  Hmmm... Where was the Kung Pao chicken?  Szechuan beef?  Lo mein?

The best part, though, was the question from the waitress after I placed my order.  Did you bring a Tupperware container?  Huh?  This lady was speaking very good English and yet I was still confused. Why?, I enquire.  Why for the soup, of course.  Of course.  Meals come with soup but they have no containers for the soup!  Isn't that a riot?!  Even more of a riot is what I found when I unwrapped the bag at home.  Apparently they "found" a container for our soup.  Stevie thinks they dug it out of the trash...

That's egg drop soup in there, not minced garlic!

Apparently everything in Japan is small, even the egg rolls!

So the lesson learned after my one hour trip for "quick, take-out Chinese" is that I might need to control my cravings in the future.  I should have gone with Steve's suggestion to order pizza.