One of the longtime complaints of English-speaking foreigners visiting restaurants in Japan is that few of them offer menus in English. Well, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is doing what it can to help eateries translate their menus into English and other languages, to help them become more hospitable to expats and tourists.
A website run by the metropolitan government's tourism division, named Restaurants with Multilingual Menus (www.menu-tokyo.jp/menu), lists 263 restaurants with menus in English, Korean, traditional and simplified Chinese, German and French. While this is far from comprehensive, you can search for eateries by area (such as Ginza, Tsukiji and Roppongi), type of cuisine (like sushi, noodles, eel and monja pan-fried snacks) and by language.
Takashi Kitajima, director of the tourism division at the metro government, says his office started offering translation assistance to restaurants in the capital in 2002, starting from such basics as how to explain the difference between nigiri (hand-formed sushi) and makimono (rolled sushi).
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