Nazar

Nazar is a good Turkish restaurant in Shinsaibashi, Osaka. We go there now and again, though not very often - we unfortunately don't have the time to go anywhere regularly. The owner opened another restaurant in Umeda some time ago so the food can vary a fair bit depending on who is working in the kitchen at the time, though I'm sure the menu will settle eventually.

They celebrated an anniversary a few weeks ago, with a buffet, drinks and belly dancing. It was fun: the food was good, the belly dancer managed to really engage the audience, and the people were interesting.

The interior is pleasant, with plenty of Turkish accents without ever falling into kitch.

The bellydancer - Japanese, by the way, not Turkish - got people up and dancing along with the music. And no, it was not a costume party.

Bellydancer, part of the buffet, and in the background Atatürk. It's not a big restaurant.

One group of regulars are military otaku, with an eclectic mix of mostly European uniform pieces - the pike helmets are Polish, apparently, and the white flowerpot thing is colonial British. One of them sported a monocle and an iron cross. We had no idea what they were about at first; Ritsuko thought they could be comedians still in stage costume, while I thought they might be right-wingers that'd lost their minds. But no, they simply dress up in uniform and meet over dinner from time to time.

As a fellow geek I certainly understand and sympathize with such an obsession in general, even while I'm firmly opposed to the tasteless idea of treating military items as something positive or worth glorifying.