japan food adventures part 2

Here's part two of our food experiences in Japan.

Since we will be travelling the next two months and have tight budgetary constraints, we had to get into the habit of eating fairly cheaply... So unfortunately, fugu and marbled kobe beef was off the menu... next time japan next time! Despite the limitations, we were able to sample many fine offerings from convenience stores and bakeries, and become well acquainted with the numerous delights Japanese fast food establishments had to offer!

Here we made a cheap meal out of  pickled cabbage and soba with egg strips, spring onions, wasabi, soba dipping sauce and seaweed flakes from the convenience store.

You can have a wonderful picnic for about 1000 yen with a good number convenience food delights, as we did in Nara - We had soba, tofu, noodle salad, and (not shown) a rice ball and sandwiches. Nearly all sandwiches are sold with their crust cut off - or perhaps they've found a way to make crust free bread?



First Kitchen is a ubiquitous chain serving western style pasta and burgers. I had pasta with eggplant and minestrone soup which were all quite delicious!  The pasta tasted more like udon noodles than spaghetti but I think I preferred it that way! It was also quite nice to have some tomato based dishes after two weeks of beef don and ramen.

Coco Curry House - you could get curry drizzled on almost anything here in five levels of spiciness. There's sausage curry, hamburger curry, even fried quail eggs with curry etc. This one is the very popular pork katsu curry with cheese.

More curry but this time in pastry... delicious in a way only a curry filled donut can be!

This one had an egg in it!

We had ramen a lot. The ones we had at this ramen bar in Osaka was probably the best! The funny thing was because there was no english in the ordering vending machine,  we didn't know what we actually ordered until we got it.


The noodles were served cold for dipping into hot broth which gave the noodles a firmer, chewier texture which I quite liked. My dipping sauce was a very rich pork soy broth and a fish flavoured broth. Joe had one with curry sauce.The pork broth was the best - rich, very flavoursome and salty.

We were in Osaka - apparently the birthplace of the takoyaki!

Even though I was quite full that night I just had to try some takoyaki. The octopus chunk in each ball was huge! Almost too big I think and took quite a bit of chewing to get through each chunk of tentacle.

Yakitori experience take two. Our first experience with yakitori was a bit weird - chicken butt and chiken skin on skewers wasn't really my thing. This time we tried it at the 'Yakitori alley' in Shinjuku, Tokyo - two alleyways crammed with tiny yakitori bars. this area is very atmospheric and apparently was inspiration for scenes in Bladerunner.

We stayed away from weird chicken parts this time. Here is the  vegetarian plate - skewers of capsicums, mushroom, leek and garlic. We ate a whole skewer of grilled garlic cloves (six cloves) which was pretty good, although probably made us smell pretty bad after that..

This was the meat plate - chicken and pork grilled with soy sauce. Simple and tasty.

See part 1 of our food adventures

fukuoka

I embarked on a 6 hour journey south to fukuoka, in preparation to go to korea the next day. Unfortunately I was exhausted and limping, as I've been lugging around a slightly sprained foot from all the recent walking! But none the less, Gotta try and see some stuff!

It was much more coastal here of course, and very peaceful.



This was at Ohori Park.



It's nice just to walk around with the sandy soil and trees.



Ohori park is basically a lake, with a small island in the middle.



These fish get bigger every time I see them. That duck should be more afraid. Turtles too - I guess they're all friends.



I almost slept through the evening, waking up in almost a panic at midnight. Somewhat optimistically, I ventured out looking for the night markets in a wandering fashion.



Some of them were packing up, but there was still some activity about. I was sat down to eat some hakata style ramen and beer with some locals. Very nice people, they even paid for my meal.



Saying goodbye, I had a very fun night walking around. Here a couple were trying to buy/catch some eels. Awesome!

ghibli museum and mitaka

Arief scored some tickets to the ghibli museum! What a treat!



Ohhh so cool. Unfortunately we couldn't take photos inside, but it was very inspirational and very fun.



And the surrounding area of mitaka was very beautiful.



Hello stone!



It was really peaceful here.



Freshness burger!

day out at odaiba

Grace has run away to taiwan for a few weeks, leaving me behind in tokyo. I get to hang out with Arief as we explore the artifical island of odaiba!

This blue creature greets us - he looks like a snoopy ripoff :P



We walked around alot, and found a very creepy maritime museum containing many wax characters. For a time it felt like Arief and I were the only real people on the ship.



Onwards!



We walked in the sun alot - my glasses decided to break as we walked past these guys doing parkour tricks.



The main town is served by a monorail system, but it all feels strange, like there's more space than they know what to do with.



Unfortunately this was closed! You can go inside usually.



Wandered through Sega's Joyopolis, a large arcade showroom where we played a few games but left feeling like the monopoly man here had taken our lunch money.



The beaches nearby didn't feel right either, but it was nice!



Arief feeling heroic by the shore.



Mini liberty!



There was a really big ferris wheel with pretty colours



And maybe to add to the randomness, although it could also mean the whole area was still a work in progress!



This building looked so silly I'm not even uploading a proper picture of it.



Home time - a good day.



We decided to walk back across the rainbow bridge we previously monorailed. It was pretty huge, I kept imagining it falling down!

some japan beer

I like beer, and with so many new beers to taste I don't want to forget even one of them! This was the first beer I had when we arrived. I was tired and hungry, and suntory premium here gave me a hug.



Simple can of kirin lager. It's cheap and pleasant.



These suntory rich malt's are quite nice and seem to settle me at the end of the day. I vaugely knew of suntory before coming to jp, about 100 year old whisky company.



this yebisu was enticing and tasty. The brand is old (1890) but now owned by sapporo.



Dropped into some fancy kirin drinking hole expecting what we got - expensive drinks with too much head. The half and half was good, it is half lager and half stout. Wanted a full stout - future!



This was a really tasty beer - Echigo is an old province from 1850s on the sea of japan side. Brewed by the echigo beer company, I'll be on the lookout for more from them.



Some other tasty suntory premium.



Sapporo is one of my favorites in australia, here it goes down much nicer :D And a cool can!