Choosing a meal isn’t too easy in Japan. Sometimes the menus are just in Japanese and you also have the language barrier. My best choice where small sushi sellers near residential areas. And I went to soup eaterys underneath subway stations where you select your meal at a vending machine and give the receipt to the chef.
A help also for Japanese people are small plastic imitations of the meals displayed in the windows of restaurants. Something I’ve never seen before. But that way you can directly see what you can get and it is much better than in Europe where sometimes the real food is exhibited (and thrown away afterwards). There are shops that are specialized on these food imitations.