The Italian Job

The Italian joint inside the hotel had an all-you-can-eat deal for 1600 yen. On the expensive side for lunch, but there was a good looking spread as viewed from the cash register where we Please Waited for a Hostess to Seat Us.
Now, I should have been dismayed at the fact that the first three entrees in the buffet line were markedly un-Italian (chow mein, fried rice, egg rolls), but I have been in Japan too long for shit like that to faze me. I piled up heaps of “Me Chinese” food next to pasta, salads, and sea bass cause I had built up an appetite making fun of posters in the elevator ride up (no pics, unfortunately).
The food looked pretty good and my stomach was rumbling as I raced to our table with my spread. Taro and I ate pretty much in silence, because we were still slightly hungover and we were stuffing ourselves. It was a full five minutes until we both remarked on how flavorless the food was. We had been fooled by the presentation of the buffet, nice decor, and efficient staff, and unwittingly stuffed ourselves with the Japanese equivalent of Shitty Buffet Food. The photo shows a plate of mini cheesecakes that I arranged nicely on a plate. This unfortunately did not disguise the fact that they tasted like sawdusty cream cheese lumps.
I would stretch the rant longer, but I am working on self-control recently, and really, is there any better revenge than letting the Shitty Italian Restaurant in the Mitsui Garden Hotel (Nara Branch) underspice its pathetic, bland way into obscurity with much help from its obviously inept, untalented, and most definitely un-Italian chefs & planning staff? Oh yeah, I guess I could always SLANDER IT ON THE INTERNET.
Props out to Al Gore for inventing this shit.