Mini Post: 24 Hour Meat

It is 11:00 pm. You need to go grocery shopping for your big BBQ party tomorrow. Unfortunately, all the supermarkets are closed or closing. You don't have time to wait for the supermarkets to open tomorrow morning. This is quite a conundrum. Well, I have some great news for you. Get your meat shopping done at any time of the day or night at this place. Welcome to the 24-hour meat shop Nikuoka.

Nikuoka

Nikuoka is an unmanned meat shop that originally started in Ryugasaki city. The picture above is not the Ryugasaki location. It is the Tsukuba location. Nikuoka just opened this location recently and it is located in the Sakura area of Tsukuba.
My wife and I were driving to Banzai Naporitan, when she saw this meat place out of the corner of her eye. We agreed to check this place out after our naporitan dinner. An hour later, we both walked in looking to buy some meat for tomorrow's dinner.

Inside

When we walked in, the store was dead quiet. No employees in sight. The walls of the store were lined up with freezers full of meat. On top of the glass cases were pictures of the meat stored in the freezer, the price, the weight, and a description of the meat. There were all kinds of meat available at this store. Steak, bacon, sausages, chicken, pork intestines, jerky, and more. Walking around the store and checking out all the meat on display was fun. The price of some of the meats wasn't too bad. Not super cheap, but not bad. Papers were near the cash registers on how to cook and defrost certain meats.
The Ibaraki Eats Duo decided to grab some bacon slices and cow tongue. We then headed for the unmanned cash register.

Paying

It's quite simple really. Scan the barcode on your meat package and pay. Very simple. There is one catch though. This is a cashless store. You can only pay by card or by a smartphone application like PayPay. No Suica.
We grabbed our meat and headed home. The next night we planned on trying the beef tongue.

Beef Tongue

Beef tongue over white rice is an easy and tasty dinner. I opened up the plastic package, defrosted the meat, and got to cooking. I was a bit disappointed with how thin the beef tongue was. I like my beef tongue thick and meaty. It was so thin that the beef tongue cooked in a little over a minute. I sprinkled some salt on the beef tongue and gave it a try. It was not too shabby. I paid around 600 yen for 8 slices of beef tongue and even though it was thin, I still enjoyed the taste of it and thought I got a good deal for this meat. Not bad for a 24-hour meat shop. My wife also tried some beef tongue with white rice and she liked the fact that the beef tongue was thin. She said it went well with her white rice.
We both agreed that one day we would go back to Nikuoka. It was a fun little side trip that we wouldn't mind having again. I plan on giving their sausages a chance next time and maybe even one of their steaks.

So if you find yourself with a late night craving of BBQ and would like to grill your own meat, why not give Nikuoka a chance? Who knows, you might see us there, grabbing some frozen meat for a BBQ or meaty dinner.
Enjoy!

For more information on Nikuoka, check out their website:
https://www.nikuoka029.com/