Dining 'Under the Arches' of the Japan Rail in Tokyo

The yen may be hammering the dollar right now, but you can still eat incredibly well in Tokyo without busting the budget -- provided you know where to go. Often, that means dining under the arches of Tokyo's many elevated railroad tracks.

Dining under the arches in Japan is a very different experience from eating at the Golden Arches in the U.S. Instead of burgers, fries and shakes, these Tokyo eateries offer savory soba and udon noodle dishes, impeccably fresh sushi and sashimi and juicy yakitori -- perfectly grilled meats impaled on skewers.

The purest form of this kind of eating is found at Yakitori Alley near the Shinjuku train station in the center of Tokyo. More formally known as Omoide Yokocyo (''memory lane''), this is a very narrow set of pedestrian lanes. How narrow? Someone with the wingspan of Shaquille O'Neal could reach out and touch both sides of the alley, grazing dozens of the hole-in-the-wall restaurants put up in the city's first rush of post-war reconstruction. One-story restaurants and vending machines, and nothing else, line the lanes.

Other yakitori alleys cluster near major train stations. But the one in Shinjuku, a district of bars, electronics shops, discreetly winking sex shops, massive department stores and the luxury Park Hyatt (the hotel featured in the movie "Lost in Translation"), is my favorite. An American resident of Tokyo first brought me here on a wintery night and directed my gaze skyward, to a neon-smeared cityscape veiled in falling rain. "This is the place that inspired Ridley Scott to come up with the look of "Blade Runner," she said.