This little restaurant on the corner is a ramen (noddle) shop where we have eaten many times. The price is right and the food is good. The hiragana over the door says "ramen" and we can actually read it now. Colleen and I have memorized the hiragana alphabet and it has really helped. We are not totally illiterate anymore but we have much to learn yet. We now have to learn the katakana alphabet. As for the thousands of Kanji characters, I'm not sure what we will do about that.