Izakaya Hotaru Yokosuka 居酒屋蛍横須賀

Hiding in the shadows of Pepper Lunch, Hotaru delivers to those who can spot its diminutive sign and entrance. This is a place to go and relax and get away from the hustle of the street. Bring your family or bring a date - they'll be impressed.

It's hard to believe, but this is my 100th restaurant review. Although I can safely say I've eaten at the majority of Yokosuka restaurants, I know of many that I have yet to try. New ones continue to open all the time. That is the nice thing about Yokosuka, it's small enough that you can get to know your way around pretty well, but large enough that it continues to bring new and interesting restaurants.

Is there any significance in choosing Hotaru as the 100th restaurant? In my opinion yes, but I have to be careful with my enthusiasm for any particular place. Especially with small places like Hotaru.

Hotaru provides an English menu but it's missing some of their dishes. Quite often the English version of restaurant menus do not have all the dishes that are on the Japanese version. The menu you see below includes every dish on the Japanese version of their menu so you're not missing any of their specialties.

There is little to lure you down into Hotaru. A small unobstrusive sign - "Hotaru Wine & Dining," a Japanese menu on the wall, and steps leading down into the unknown.

When you get to the bottom of the stairs you'll find an English menu on the wall, another sign, and a plain wooden door. Crack the door open, take a step inside, and enjoy some great food.

Hotaru means "firefly" and is part of the Banzai group of restaurants in Yokosuka. The other ones being Banzai Honten and Banzai Shiori. Can this group do any wrong???

蛍　is the modern kanji for firefly, however, the restaurant Hotaru uses an outdated, but much more interesting kanji -

螢 I like this one much better than the modern usage.

Kanji sidebar: the 虫 in the kanji above is the "bug" radical and by itself means "insect, bug, or cricket." It's associated with a number of kanji related to bugs. In the older version above the insect 虫 you see 火. Actually you see two of them. What's really neat is that 火 means fire or flame. So this kanji 螢 couldn't be easier to remember. It doesn't even need a story to help you remember it. Bugs and fire = firefly.

However, the modern kanji 蛍 is not so hard to remember either, since it's made with the "school" primitive (the cap with the three lines above it) as taught in Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, along with "insect" - 虫. Kids have been capturing fireflies and bringing them to school for ages.

I came a across an interesting website recently that explains all the problems one typically encounters in learning Kanji. Go visit the site Kanji Damage. Or see this link here. With traditional methods of learning Kanji you'll learn the radical, in this case mountain for the example provided, and the rest of the Kanji is just a bunch of gibberish. But in the example on the right, which is similar to the method used in "Remembering the Kanji" you'll learn a meaning to go with those other elements. These elements will show up again and again in other kanji so you'll get to know them well. Put them together in a story and now you can get the meaning from the story. The story he uses in Kanji Damage is something along the lines of "the director made me go up the mountain to get a tiny slice of pie." The overall meaning of the kanji is "minuteness." Using the method on the left you'll be studying Kanji for a very, very long time.

Some other kanji with the "insect" in them:
蚕　silkworm
蚊 mosquito
蜜 honey
End Kanji sidebar.

Outside sign next to Pepper Lunch

You can tell a good place by the distinguished clientele that hang out around it. I've added Hotaru to the blog map but if you can find Pepper Lunch then you can find Hotaru.

Beer with salad

The beer was ordered but the salad is charged as a "seating fee" whether you want it or not - Otoshi.

Gobo chips

Fried gobo chips are so good I learned how to make them at home. Hotaru's version seems to have a bit of curry flavor to them which I really liked.

Spicy Fries

Not really that spicy though...

Grilled swordfish

The swordfish was a really great dish. It was served on top of a bed of mushrooms, zucchini, and on-choy.

Chinese black sesame seed shrimp tacos


Grilled Japanese Wagyu Beef

Stone bowl baked beef garlic rice - like a bibimbap

Spicy Chicken

Baked chicken with mustard sauce

Braised pork pie with black vinegar sauce

Zucchini and Maitake mushroom tempura

A tofu/cream cheese with Gorgonzola cheese and honey dish served with toast

From the course menu

Hotaru has course menus that include two hours of all you can drink (nomihoudai). You're not able to substitute any dishes but all of them were very good.