Decay: What do you want for dinner tonight? Droidy: Um... I dunno ... Decay: rolls eyes ... ok ... what texture are you after tonight? Droidy: Um... I want something hot ... Decay: Ok ... that's a start ... a temperature, but not a texture ...

Decay reels off the names of a few places on the way back from Officeworks, most of them met with No, or I don't know ... such is the indecisiveness of Droidy ...

Decay: How about Japanese? Droidy: Yeah ... maybe? Decay: Ooh a yeah ... we might have to take that one ... how about the new one we passed the other night on the way to the restaurant of bumbling mis-orders? Droidy: We'll see... head that way and if I change my mind there's a whole pile of other restaurants around there...

Fast forward a bit and we wander past Sakura, which is situated along Kingsway in Glen Waverley, about halfway between the library and the train station. We peruse the menu, decide that yeah, the food sounds rather yummy at a reasonable price, and it would meet the criteria of being temperature hot ... yay!

We were seated promptly, and handed menus to peruse... being pretty much Japanese Food virgins (somehow, I don't think california rolls count ... ), we opted to go for one of the set menus at the back... which offered a variety of dishes to try. In the set menu we chose, we had an appetiser of bean shoots and carrot slivers with sesame, miso soup, california rolls, vegetarian rolls, salmon sushi, gyoza, tempura, some spring roll things, teriyaki beef, tatsuta age, and ice cream and green tea to finish ...

Not long after we ordered, the soup arrived ... it was clear, but had some really intersting puffy animation happening from the miso ... it kept morphing into scrambled cloud shapes. We didn't know if we were going to get spoons or something to drink the soup with, and it was a bit hot to drink straight out yet, so we waited a bit, then the appetiser came out ... the appetiser was very ... plain ? It didn't taste horrible or anything, but I couldn't place what it tasted like ... the soup, once it cooled down a little, was very nice ... it contained little chunks of of silky tofu, some crumbled seaweed?, and some other stuff, sitting at the bottom of the bowl ...

The sushi we tried was yummy ... you'd expect to get better than average stuff if you're sitting in a restaruant as opposed to our usual deal of getting a box from the food courts (: Can't avoid the seafood extender in the california rolls, but they were yummy... not too vinegared, not dried out ... they were a bit big to put all in my mouth at once, but most of the time it's going to happen with me... the salmon sushi was very fresh, no yuk fishiness to it ... I'm pretty picky about eating fish ... I'll avoid it if there's even a hint of fishiness... but this stuff was nice and firm and bite-able ...

Next came the hot entree of gyoza (pan-fried dumplings), vegetable spring rolls, and tempura (battered and fried vegetables). The gyoza were yummy, little balls of pork minced with ginger and wrapped up in some pastry... Decay liked these ones so I gave him my other one (I was sort of getting full ... lots of food!), spring rolls were spring rolls ... they got some mayonnaise type thing for dipping sauce? The tempura was very nice... very light batter, with a couple of prawns, some white fish, and just cooked and hot vegies, with a dipping sauce of ... something? I'm doing the google on it at the moment, and this is what they say is in the tempura dipping sauce: Tempura dipping sauce; 1 cup dashi,1/4 cup mirin,1/4 cup soy sauce,1 cup daikon oroshi (grated raddish), grated ginger as desired, oil. I didn't see any floaty bits in our dipping sauce though, well, not til after we lost some batter bits in it (:

The teriyaki beef and tatsuta age (deep fried marinated chicken) came out next with some rice ... the beef was nice... very tender slices, with side serving of sautéed ? bean shoots and cabbage. It tasted like ... beef? I don't know, I think I wanted something with a bit more kick somewhere, maybe we'll be able to do that once we try more stuff on the menu (: The chicken was nice... firm bits of chicken, floured and fried, with a side serve of carrot, cucumber and cabbage with a dollop of mayonnaise, of course (:

Finally, the end ... a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and a pot of green tea ... ice cream was ice cream, served in a little bowl ... the green tea was refreshing ...

All in all, it was a very nice if we were actually trying to romantic and everything we could probably manage a romantic dinner here experience... I know I'd like to go back there, try more stuff ... next time we won't be such wusses and actually pick things out instead of going the set banquet ... the staff were very efficient, keeping an eye on all the tables, ready to swoop on finished plates, but they were fairly unobtrusive in doing so ...

Verdict? 8/10 ... yummy food, decent service, reasonable price for what we ate...