fujiya @ haymarket & justin's 'one good show'

It was Justin's concert last night and the 8 of us decided to grab dinner at Fujiya beforehand. I think most people would've been to Fujiya or heard about it and the general feedback seems to be quite positive. Namely, it's one of those places that offer good food and offer a nice place for a small group of people to 'gather'. Being the night of Justin's concert, it was more or less expected that the place would be packed and it was; thanks Char for making the booking! We still got a rather crappy table though with two of us sitting on these little stools; reminiscent of those stools that Japanese people sit on when they have a shower. Anyway, we weren't there for long so it wasn't too uncomfortable.

It took us awhile to decide how to order. Despite offering quite an expansive menu of Japanese dishes including rices, noodles, hotpots, skewers, teriyaki, sushi, salad and more, most servings looked too small to divide in between 8. In the end, most of us decided to order individually but with J, Ken & myself ordering to share. We ended up order 5 dishes amongst us; seems like a lot but we polished it off quite nicely. Personally, I really enjoyed the food and would love to go back to check out the rest of the menu. By the way, they have an assortment of cocktails, mocktails, Japanese spirits which we didn't really get around to. Desserts looked good too but I was too full by the end of the meal.

Karage Chicken, Prawn Shumai (these looked really impressive when they arrived) and a huge bowl of tea (we swear they gave us bowls instead of cups!)

Sukiyaki. The mini pot sat over a quite an eye-catching blue flame. The soup was maybe a tad too sweet but the beef slices in it were quite nice.

Yakisoba - half eaten.

Beef Tataki which was the last to come. J didn't think it was too great; I thought it was ok.

With tea and all, the meal for the 3 of us came to $52. Not bad at all! Service is generally friendly; they do have those bells which you can ring to get attention. Most of us found it much easier to just wave down a passing waitress when it came to topping up the tea. Seriously, one pot of tea is hardly enough to quench the thirst of 8! By the way, this place does remind me of that Japanese restaurant in Hong Kong called Watami; food is definitely on par.

Anyway, after dinner it was off to the concert. As like any concert, it probably didn't start till 8.45pm despite advertising a starting time of 8.15pm. It's probably been awhile since this group of us have been to a Honkie concert; well not since first or second year of uni so really, it was a good reminder of the old times.

As for Justin (the singer), I loved him! His singing was as I remembered from his last concert in Sydney where he appeared elevated in the middle of the Entertainment Centre singing the song 'Kong'. This time he didn't make that much of a dramatic appearance but again he did appear in the middle of the centre singing a few English songs with piano accompaniment. Thumbs up to both him and the pianist.

What was highly controversial and led to much talk and debate both during and after the concert is captured in the following photo. Funny enough that was one of the better photos I had from the whole night which is a shame really. Pictured is Theresa who was Justin's special guest at the concert.

Despite the controversy, it was definitely 'One Good Show'!