Yokosuka Food Corner - Blue Street and Beyond: Moaimo

Once I get around to the "cool izakaya" or "best interior" grouping Moaimo will surely make the list. Located at the head of Blue Steet they are very accessible, making them an ideal lunch spot. If you're able to, it would be a cool hangout at or after dinner as well.

Moaimo is run by Matsumo-san and Kaoru-san. He hails from cold Akita prefecture but they serve up Okinawan and southern Japan cuisine. They've been in business for three years now. Mr. does most of the cooking and Mrs. handles the front end of the business.

Over the speakers play a mix of R&B, Reggae, and a little bit of rock. Head upstairs and you'll see a wall stacked full of CDs. Kind of nostalgic, like my older brothers and their eight track tapes. Upstairs is also where the small kitchen and bar are located, along with a few more tables.

Moaimo is an upbeat place with friendly service. They have an excellent English menu. While I was there they even asked me to review their English lunch menu to help clarify a higher price for the drinks and side dishes if they are ordered separate from a meal. But as you can see from their menu below, they really didn't need help. Matsumo-san speaks pretty good English, as does his wife and some staff.

The interior may remind you of a beach hut, but one with what I'll call "endless interesting-ness." Whether you are downstairs or upstairs, the place is full of shelves, wall hangings, and trinkets. Downstairs there is a gallery wall that changes monthly. Upstairs, your eyes will always be able to find something on which to focus, study, or ask the owner about. There are quite a few homemade liqueurs in bottles lining the end of the bar. They've even managed to make a wall full of slippers into a piece of art. As you head down the stairs, you'll find a clever map made out of some branches, which show you the location of Moaimo.

One room downstairs has a table with a children's playroom off to the side, complete with a small slide.

The menus are below and lunches are sets if you desire. The neat thing about Moaimo is that you can scale up your order if you desire to a larger size. You'll have 100 Yen or 200 Yen options. Include a drink and even with the 200 Yen option you'll pay only 900 Yen in total for an extra large set lunch. The extra sizes will be the focus of the kanji sidebar.

You can find Moaimo on the blog map.

Kanji Sidebar:

The lunch menu is written in both English and Japanese. The Japanese includes some katakana and some simple kanji as well. You should be able to bounce it off the Key Food Kanji page as they are common ones like "chicken" and "pork."

As for the other kanji, the ones listed below appear in menus with some frequency so are worth covering.

単品 is pronounced tanpin which appears on the lunch menu to the left of the word "all." This means individual items (not part of a set). This appears on many Japanese menus. The "tan" part 単 means simple, one, or single. The second part 品　means goods or articles.

Further breaking simple down,　you will learn in Heisig's Remembering the Kanji that this element 田 actually means rice field, but occasionally we'll want to assign the meaning as brains when it is used within other kanji. 　Below the brains we see 十 which we can use the actual meaning of ten or assign it the meaning of needle. Within Heisig's book multiple meanings are sometimes assigned to these elements or "primitives" as he calls them. This gives you flexibility in the stories that you develop to assemble a story out of these elements. Lastly the three hash marks above 田 are assigned the meaning of owl. It may help to think of the claws of on owl. Now that you have all of the elements you just put together a story to help you remember the meaning. A "needle brain" has the connotation of being not so smart or small/simple brains. So one possible story would be - Owls have anything but simple brains. So that takes care of 単 or simple.


品　means goods or articles. This is one of the easiest kanji to learn as it looks like three boxes stacked. And you can imagine goods or articles stacked high at a store. Thus putting the two kanji together 単品 you get simple goods or the more refined meaning of individual items. In the menu below, the lunch options on the left are the individual items and sell for 600 Yen.

In the lunch menu, below "単品" we see 大盛 and 特盛.

大盛 means large serving. It is made up of 大 and 盛.

大 by itself means large. You can picture a person standing with their legs spread apart and arms outstretched explaining how big something is. In this sense we probably don't even need to look at the second part of the kanji compound because we can understand that for an extra 100 Yen you will get a large serving.
The second kanji, however, is made up of 成 which means turn into (it helps to think of it as turn into almost in a magical sense) and 皿 which means dish /bowl. Together 盛 it means boom or prosper. The turn into kanji can be broken down further but since it's more complex, doing so would be counterproductive as it would be skipping quite a bit. Bowl or dish on the other hand is not too hard - just imagine looking at a carved bowl from the side. Now put big and prosper together 大盛 and you have the sense of large serving. It helps to have that bowl/dish in the last kanji too. You could focus on that with no complications and simply make it large bowl or large dish.

Lastly we have 特盛
特 means special and appears in many kanji compounds. It can be separated into 牛 and 寺.
寺 can be further broken down into ground or earth 土 and glue 寸 (this character actually means measurement, but as a primitive using glue is very helpful. This element shows up very frequently within kanji)

牛 is cow or beef
寺 is Buddhist temple. A simple story is - Ground 土 glued together 寸 is how old Buddhist temples 寺 used to be made.

Putting the two together it is very easy to come up with the meaning of special. For this kanji, I like to associate Buddhist temple more broadly with India. Then you can come up with a story like this - Cows receive special treatment in India.

特盛 Putting it all together, it means extra large portion (tokumori).