Inua
Ah Inua. A super duper expensive place, that I really wanted to go to when I heard it opened, but after seeing how much it cost compared to actual Japanese restaurants, I didn't want to go. But Thomas Frebel runs it, so.... Oh the agony!
However, I happened to have an extra couple of nights in Tokyo after my parents left, and decided at very short notice (two days), tried to book something. I tried to call Den about 68 times without success, but Inua was good to book online! And so here I was.
It feels a bit like Noma, which was to be expected (though this is based on my Noma Australia experience, since I haven't actually been to the Noma. And of course with an international team, it was actually rather weird to speak to such fluent English speakers haha. We received a tour of the kitchens (including the "show" kitchen, the main kitchen, and the test kitchen, which is downstairs past their fermentation fridges!) which was pretty amazing. So many fermentation experiments and space for research!
After the tour, we were seated and we got an Aussie waitress!
Yeeeah look at those jaws!!! That's a set of monkfish teeth!!! How cool is that! This was actually a super fluffy moussey thing, not unlike the way the rum lamington was made at Noma Australia.
Simple but delicious. Who knew that savoury citrus could taste like this! Since it's been a while, I can't actually remember what it was, but I think it was grapefruit?
A shot of the kitchen :D
I love eating flowers!! And this was a thin cracker made with miso, and had a layer of truffle paste too. What I loved about this was that the truffle was not overpowering, and the cracker had great flavour and texture. I can't get over how pretty this is!!!
This was interesting. That was some crazy looking cured salmon roe! I took a close look at it when I received it and kind of shouted out excitedly that it was roe hahaha. I don't think I absolutely loved it though, but it was definitely an interesting dish!
Yeeeah. Yeeah! During our tour of the kitchen, we saw the maitake mushrooms being aged. So cool! And I love mushrooms. This, the ugliest dish, was my favourite! Our waitress even said, Thomas hates to have a signature dish, but he just can't take this one off the menu. I agree! This had so much flavour and was totally amazing! Plus I loved sprinkling the sakura petals onto the mushroom. Yes!!!
We started off with some tea, but we also requested the juice pairing. I was looking forward to some interesting flavours! To be honest though I don't really remember exactly what the juices tasted like, but I also think that Noma Australia did the best pairings. These were great to drink regardless though!
A roll up!! Ahahaha. It's another pretty dish! I love that this was presented on beeswax in a picture frame, it really does look too good to eat. Nice and tart, and not loaded with sugar like its childhood, cheap counterpart. This was classy!
Well, it would be classy except my brother tried to do some origami with it hahaha. That was fun to watch.
This lump of foamy stuff was such a weird looking dish, but when you look at the way the vegetables were arranged, it sort of reminds me of the abalone dish from Noma Australia. It's a great way to sample each of the different vegetables, and I didn't recognise most of them! I think I did manage to eat Japanese knotweed though I think. Under the foam was some tasty freshly made beancurd skin! I love yuba!
This also had grasshopper garum at the bottom, which was tasty! I even joked that eating grasshoppers is a great method for pest control hahaha.
A very citrussy drink!
This juice was more interesting though! This was a musk melon juice (and I got really excited when I heard that it was musk melon, because the dessert I had at Waku Ghin was so fragrant!)
Junsai!!! Do you know how much I love this plant? It is so fun to look at and eat because it has a literal water shield! That's why I enjoyed the soba at the national park in Hakodate too ahahaha. Who cares about the caviar, give me more junsai!
Woah okay. The serious knife has come out. And that claw carving! Turns out these knives are all made from wood and animals. How cool! It's all harvested in a conscientious manner, so these are from dead animals as a way to use every part of the animal.
Ha, a steak knife for fish! This was pretty tasty, especially with the egg yolk sauce.
A pine infusion! Except I forgot what this was... probably a tea of sorts!
A soup with a herb bouquet!
Another juice I don't actually remember haha. That's what happens when I do far too much on a single holiday right after a massive holiday and end up backlogged with so much stuff!
An interesting drink! Again I don't remember much but just looking at the flavour combination, I can imagine it had some interesting flavours to it!
For all my forgetfulness, this is one dish that I can't forget about. I remember when the chef served this one, I wasn't sure if I was hard of hearing when I heard "bees" instead of "beans". Was it really bees, or beans? Rice and beans is more common, but I mean, it is Inua so bees weren't exactly out of the question. The flowers are so pretty here too!
But I didn't like the rice. At all. It was actually far too hard and when I ate it, there wasn't flavour in the rice and the chew wasn't chewy, the texture kind of resembled undercooked brown rice? The crispy bees were amazing though. Yeah, I asked our waiter to clarify and she said yes they are bees! Bzzz!! Ahahahaha. Nice! I love crispy bees! They were so light and crunchy! The rice needed heeaaaaps of sauce to make it palatable for me.
My brother and I totally used up all the sauce! The sauce was really yummy. But I just didn't like the rice. Usually in a high end restaurant, I'll generally still appreciate flavours or textures even if I don't really like them. Examples of this include Eleven Madison Park's little pumpkin side dish, or Attica's pumpkin and beer foam dish. Yeah okay so maybe I am not the biggest pumpkin fan? Also, Rockpool Bar and Grill Sydney's orange chocolate mousse thing. It was absolutely fantastic and delicious, but I don't like orange chocolate.
But this, this I just didn't understand, so I asked the waiter about it, because I was interested to know the story about the dish so I could appreciate it. She said that the rice was cooked this way to contrast with the bees, and is actually how the rice growers eat the rice when they mix it with bees larvae. Interesting! I am still a bit unconvinced about the rice texture, but that just means I should go to a rice planting festival and see for myself, right???
Oh yeah, we got a story from the chef about the bees as well. The bee larvae are harvested from the honeycombs in really cold temperatures, so they rotate chefs who have to go into the freezer and harvest them and rotate out ahahaha. That's incredible! Harvesting the larvae also benefits the bees apparently, so that they can produce more honey or something. Either way, the thing I really loved about this dish was that it really got me talking and asking questions, so this was great and I really felt like this is a part of the restaurant experience that I've never really had before!
What a cute little desserty thing! Interesting flavours too, because I think it also had olives on the stick?
Woah! Now this is impressive! It's a millefeuille made of seaweed! I wish more people did this. Apparently this went through lots of testing before they managed to make it well and consistently, and the cream inside was delicious too! It reminded me a little of those seaweed snacks you can get at the shops, except this was the sweet version. I believe it also passed the vertical cutting test so that the cream didn't all splurt out the other end! This was my favourite dessert!
Look at those mini kiwis!! How cute! And that toothpicky stick thing had leaves you could eat, which were soaked in mirin and sochu. They packed a huge punch of flavour and were really fun to eat!
And our final dessert. Look at the detail of that wood sorrel! Imagine plating hundreds of these... yeah, this is why I always say no, I will not pursue the profession of being a chef. That's a lot of blood sweat and tears, right there!
And here's another knife! This one is so pretty and super chunky too! I think we got this knife because of the questions we asked, but who knows haha. I think this one is the deer antler one?
I did the honours of cutting the cakey thing. How pretty! It was a good end to the night.
The waitress then asked, since I had left a note that I wanted a photo with Thomas Frebel, whether or not I still wanted it. Uuuh, I replied with, I thought he was in Copenhagen? She looked very confused. "He got back this morning... and he served you some of your dishes!"
OMG. REALLY?! OMG HOW MORTIFYING THAT I DIDN'T RECOGNISE HIM THOUGH IN HINDSIGHT HE SERVED US THE JUNSAI DISH AND SOME OF THE OTHERS WHAT.
That was probably the most embarassing restaurant moment ever. Moreso than the backward knife at Contra. How was any of this possible, am I just the most terrible, ignorant person on the planet or something? To not even recognise the person I specifically requested a photo with?!
Well after that embarassment, we managed to get our photo after all. I was offered a photo with just Thomas, or the entire team. Of course the entire team! It's more fun that way! And so we ended up taking a few shots, with the Inua style pose - an OK sign made with the right hand, and saying "very nice" in a way dictated by one of the staff. It was a rule that you had to say it the way he wanted, e.g. low and slow, or high pitched and fast. Or normal. Hahaha, how fun! I am so glad I got this experience, even though it cost me far more than I wanted to originally spend while on holiday. Totally worth it in the end!
I still really want to one day try and make it to Den though, but this was a great experience of eating Japanese ingredients that have been made by chefs with no preconceptions or rules on how the food should or shouldn't be prepared. So much fun! I think the drink pairing still makes Noma Australia my favourite "Noma" experience but the maitake, bees, and photos made this really memorable too!
Japan 2019 – Part 2
Hello Sapporo!! The first night we simply explored around a little bit and ate at another random izakaya. It was cool walking through the massive park and seeing the clocktower. The Panasonic tower looked pretty cool too, but we didn't go up.
It was actually hilarious because my brother likes checking that we've been paying attention to where we're going by asking my parents and I to find the way back. I'm terrible with directions anyway, being heavily reliant on Google to tell me where to go. For once, my landmarks weren't food places. On the way back, I recognised the street full of bridal shops and that's how I knew we were going the right way XD
A specialty milk specialty coffee shop! Forget single origins, here you can choose different types of milk for your coffee!
My brother tried the unhomogenised jersey milk from Biei, and my mum chose holstein milk from Hakodate. Those drinks ended up being more chocolate-heavy rather than creamy or letting acidity through, which was interesting, because I would have expected the jersey milk to perform quite well and make for a super sweet and creamy drink.
My flat white made with guernsey milk from Takinoe. It ended up tasting the sweetest and creamiest of the three which was surprising.
Otaru!! We spent half a day here and it's a really nice place!
Taking a pic of my brother taking a pic of ice cream!
Warabi mochi!! Man I love this stuff so much!
This set of clouds was really interesting, reminded me of angel wings!
I love all the running people carts!
What a cute little seagull! I kind of wish I could have been in two places at once lol. I was too busy taking a kazilion photos of this fellow, so i wasn't able to then back away and take photos of the crowd taking photos of the seagull XD Oh well!
I need to get myself a yukata one day...
There's an abandoned railway here too with plenty of things to take pictures of!
Ah, a better shot of the angel wings clouds!
The sky is so nice! We stayed here till sunset to take photos of the river, but none of my photos were actually that good XD
Haha the Lawson's here had clear mochi! So I had to go buy some. Also, there's something here called "Mo-cheese" or similar that was also really tasty! It was cheese flavoured mochi, and it was amazing! This was for the train ride away from Sapporo.
Wow, Noboribetsu! My brother gave us a heads up that it was a little sulfur-smelling here, but during our stay, it was quite mild. But I think I've now got the smell ingrained into my brain and when I boil eggs all I can think about are the sulfur pits of Noboribetsu ;_;
I absolutely love that this is a demon town. So many demons everywhere!!!
We went to one of the small shops that looked like they do BBQs. All the seafood! Molluscs and shellfish are the best! Though the sea snails on a stick were not as tasty as I imagined they might be XD
Tea and sweets at our hotel!
To the bear park!! These bears were actually super lively and wave at people for food :D
They also hate the crows.
And a duck race too! The ducks didn't look too impressed though haha
Those are the males, in a separate enclosure. And that little spot with people in it, is a place where you can feed the bears!
And the reason the bears don't like the crows: they steal food! But the actual biscuits are too big for the crows to eat, so there was a funny moment where the bears were chasing a crow around while the crow kept dunking the biscuit in a puddle of water till it softened enough for it to eat XD
Hell Valley, a super cool place! There's a lot of walking trails here to go through and some of them are quite tricky to navigate. One path even has a quiz about the area, which was fun to do since it also had English on it.
There's also a spring in town that actually starts bubbling like crazy for a while every few hours. My brother's right, it sounds like a washing machine! Pretty cool to watch!
Dinner at the hotel was pretty amazing. It was funny because as I saw all the food, I said, "it feels like a kaiseki!" and my brother responded with, "that's because it is a kaiseki!" lol. This place had really nice food! I really enjoyed eating here!
Sakura tofu!
Sashimi
Broad bean paste stuff, with a super cute demon club shaped carrot XD
Hotpot!
We even got a whole fish, and some tempura fish. There's so much food!
Snow crab and a delicate vinegar sauce
A strawberry dessert.
There's a massive golden demon club here that has regular "performances" where the demons pop out and do a little dance. I can't imagine enjoying this more than a couple of times though!
I do love this place, it's a super nice hotel and the onsen here was huge too! There were all these different pools with different minerals and properties, and an outdoors area too. But the best bit was that this place had a dry sauna. Woah it was hot! But really enjoyable to be in there (in a help I'm a melting sweaty mess kind of way) and I liked alternating between that and the pools. There was also a section that had heavy "chunks" of water that fell down, so it was a massage for the shoulders and neck! While Noboribetsu is quite small, I wouldn't mind coming back here again!
Oh yeah, I'm totally a local and doing the stamp collecting thing!
Bye bye Noboribetsu! Onwards to Hakodate, my brother's favourite town..
Japan 2019 - Part 1
Oh man too many holidays at once. This Japan trip was actually a family holiday, where my mum wanted to visit a heap of different places. The trip was mainly based in Hokkaido, and I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy the trip or not since it wasn't a food based trip, and I've never done a not-food-based-trip before. It turns out I loved it! It's rare for my to have a life changing holiday, but this one was pretty incredible. Because I'm still sick of typing many words, this will just be mainly picture spam because I took a LOT of photos!
We started off in Tokyo, and here's a coffee my brother fetched for me. It's notable because it's a warm can, and apparently it's a single origin - Ethiopia Mokka. It didn't taste terrible, just bland XD
I also traded my brother some more of my St Ali instant coffee for this Supreme Coffee instant coffee. I haven't tried it yet though!
A trip to Life Size Cribe, and I had no idea that red beans and butter on toast was a thing XD My brother ordered this and it was pretty tasty! Maybe I'll have to try making my own at some point!
Coffee with Mugi!!!
Lunch at Shake Shack. Yeah I know, I've just come from America. But it's still tasty!
Haneda Airport, domestic terminal. Look they have a wasabi plant on display! And I finally got my hands on some saba sushi. This was my plane snack, and it's just as I imagined! Good strong vinegar flavour to offset the really yummy fatty-fishiness!
The AirDo plane's bear totally looks like a koala. Hello Kushiro!
Most of this trip simply involved eating at places that looked decent. This was a cute little place!
Oden and whale meat! Yay now I can say I've eaten a sentient creature >_>
So many pictures at a fish market in Kushiro. This ended up being my pick your own seafood bowl. Plus the sad looking crab on the side. All of this cost about 3200 yen. The crab was a bit disappointing because it was still partly frozen. The seafood bowl, on the other hand, was quite nice! I love getting fresh seafood here! I also ate some asparagus and pumpkin. Pumpkin here is totally different from the main types of pumpkin back in Aus! These ones are dense and creamy, like the texture of chestnuts! I had a hard time liking them because they were heavier than I expected, but still tasted good!
We had a hire car for the beginning of the trip, so we went and visited the national park and wetlands.
Yay I got to do some trainspotting by following my brother around! It's actually a fun thing to do!
It's hard to take photos when we're driving twice as fast as the locals. But cows!! Cows everywhere!
There was a cutesy little shop called Poppotei that makes pretty ramen! Pork and seasonal vegetables. I love the colour in this and it tasted good too!
Lake Mashu is super pretty!
You can smell this place before you get here. Sulfur mountains!! This one was quite stinky!
No idea if people are randomly balancing rocks or some other sorcery is at work here...
Our hotel was at Lake Akan. A beautiful place, but watch out for the insane massive nasty mosquitoes that are everywhere!!!
Marimo island! This is where the marimo museum is! I remember hearing about marimos at work in Adelaide cause a friend was talking about it. Now I finally understand what they are!
The museum was small, but it had so many adorable little marimos! It even showed the life cycle of marimo.
There were touchable marimos at our hotel! They are a lot firmer than I thought, and not as fluffy. It's like a short haired rock... kind of XD
On the road again, this time a stopover at Rausu. Look at this massive octopus tentacle! Also that shot has saturated the shadows on my hand :/
Another 3000 yen seafood bowl!!
Found some nesting seagulls on the rooftop opposite where we had lunch!
A waterfall that felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. Tried a few different shutter speeds for this, but I think I still favour fast shutters.
An abandonment that my brother wanted to explore.
Waited around for a train that didn't come because "high temperatures" caused the JR lines to cancel. Instead, found some interesting bugs!
Sunset at Abashiri. My sensor is so dirty!
Set dinner at our hotel. I love the presentation! Grill your own beef, make your own noodle soup, some sashimi, crab, and an all you can eat section too!
Abashiri prison museum. I actually didn't think much of this place when we got here, but wow. The more I walked through and read the information, I ended up really liking this place! It felt like so much more than just a prison. There was a farming section here, including stories about making pickles and cutting edge farming technology. The conditions were harsh, but the prisoners loved it here. It was interesting seeing the prison cells as well, ranging from the 3 to a cell to solitary confinement, and how different materials were used for cells, for different reasons. I didn't take any pictures of this place, but I would love to visit again!
The drive to our next destination was super long, so we had a stopover at a random little stopover place. A simple, onion soup tasting ramen with the weirdest looking "fish stick" thing I've ever seen. At first I thought there was a chunk of bread in my ramen, but it's actually a spongey thing meant to resemble fish stick!
I love seeing rice fields.
Blue Lake. The water is actually super blue, it's a greeny blue and very different from the colour of the sky. This place is famous for these dead looking trees in the water? Not sure what it's all about, but it's pretty!
Look! A bumblebee! I can't believe how big they are! They are sooooo adorable!
Finally a big-ish city, Asahikawa. I call it beer river, just cause XD. Time to try some street photography!
The station here has an interesting sculpture.
My brother alerted me to the presence of sakura mochi ice cream!!! Wooohooo!
A lot of the hotels we were staying at had dinner and/or breakfast included. It turns out I love burdock here! And there's so much jelly. I love jelly! And almond tofu. There's heaps of that too! And the little shishamo fish are everywhere - I had no idea they were all bursting with roe. I made sure to eat plenty since it's hard to get back in Aus!
On the road again, so more rice fields. I'd love to visit these farms and do some rice planting one day - my brother says there are rice planting festivals that people can participate in!
This is the Ken and Mary tree. I actually have no idea who Ken and Mary are, but I think it's cool to have a tree as a tourist attraction. This was quite adorable!
Then we headed to a flower farm. Unfortunately it wasn't quite the right season to see them all in full bloom, but the place was still very picturesque, plus there were heaps of yubari melon goods here!
Yubari melon flavour "the moist stick" financier XD
Rice fields! Everywhere!
Another round of trainspotting. I actually had no idea what my brother was preparing for, so I put on my long lens since the railway track was all the way over there. Good thing, I managed to get a nice shot of the 1 car train!
Tomita farm! Full of flowers, and there's a melon farm next door, but that was closed. It was fun exploring this place!
Someone even brought in their pet parrot to take selfies with XD
They sell lavender coffee here too. Not really sure it had that much lavender flavour, but it was made to order and nice to sip on and relax at the farm.
Also got a half-half of melon and lavender flavoured soft serve since that seems to be a specialty around here.
After leaving Tomita farm, we headed to a place my brother wanted to go to. Furano ramen, a tiny tiny shop in the middle of a tiny town that served cheese ramen. Apparently lots of people leave messages about the fantastic ramen here, which was awesome! This ramen was a tad spicy, but really nice! The toilet here is apparently also super old fashioned, but I didn't feel like checking it out hahahaha. Definitely worth stopping by!
It was actually funny, even though I'm usually the one who gets asked, "how did you find out about this place?" this was the first time that I felt compelled to ask my brother how he found out about the place. It was kind of mystifying, even though I was pretty sure his answer is the same as the way I usually find out about my places. It was still weird being on the asking side instead of the answering side though!
Look! A fox!!! This was actually the third fox we saw, but the only one I managed to take a picture of. They seem used to being around cars and don't panic when we pass them. Interesting!
Can you believe that these are ski fields in winter? Amazing.
I'll end this post here, since now we're in Sapporo. What is this bee doing? Well, I found this corpse at Tomita farm, and managed to have a plastic bag handy to keep it in. Why would I want a corpse? To pose it and take photos of course! However, keeping a dead bumblebee safe was an arduous task. I wanted to make a haiku about carrying the spirit of a bumblebee all across Japan, so that it could experience things that most bumblebees couldn't. Except I never really got a chance to show it off. But it did travel all the way from Tomita farm to Hokodate! What an effort!
Japan, April 2017
Time to post about my second visit to Japan. While I was still pretty clueless, my brother had been living in Tokyo for a while now, so I pretty much had a guided tour, which was pretty cool. What I didn't expect was for it to still be so cold the first couple of days! That was mainly because it was also rainy; the last few days were nice and warm.I had wanted to book a nice restaurant while I was here, but alas, the ones I wanted were all closed! It wasn't until afterwards that I realised that it was because the San Pellegrino World's 50 Best awards were on. Then I didn't mind so much that I missed out. Maybe next time!
Here's some ramen, because ramen is what you eat when you land in Japan. I always forget what this place is called, I think it's Tokyo Base. They use the same tonkotsu broth as Ippudo and it was delicious! I'd been so ramen deprived (deliberately so, because Perth) so this was fantastic. It's just how I like it!
My first coffee stop, a place called Light Up coffee, with a really pleasant light blue colour scheme and a cute shiba inu theme!!! And the coffee here was great! This was the Ethiopia Guji, and it was roasted lighter than Sydney stuff. It was so delicious! And of course I had to get the lights reflecting in my coffee cause it's the cool thing to do. It kind of looks like a face!
I saw a sign for taiyaki after leaving Light Up, so we had a look around. It was tasty, but I didn't feel it was anything too special.
More ramen, this time at a place called Ichiran, which is really popular and one of my brother's favourite ramen places. The broth was super rich, to the point where it was thicker than what I prefer. I also wish I had ordered extra firm noodles rather than just firm, as it had softened past my liking. I really like that there are so many different kinds of ramen out there!
Isn't this so cool? The only thing I hated about my trip was that I'd overcaffeinated far too early, so by the time I got to Japan, I was very limited with my coffee intake. Luckily, this cafe, called Uni Stand, had a nice selection of green teas, so I wanted to try them. I'd forgotten that Japanese green tea is very savoury, so I was really glad when they asked what kind of tea I usually like. I said I like sweeter teas, so they recommended their tea of the day instead of their single origin teas. I don't actually remember what it was, but I was glad they offered it, because it was really drinkable though still more savoury than what I like.My brother also immediately spotted the nixie tube clock, and when I tried to take a picture of it, I noticed that my camera was seeing the numbers differently! Some were flickering more than others whereas the eye could only see the ones that were fully lit, I thought that was pretty cool!
This tickled my hipster sense a little. A kale juice shop! It's kind of hilarious. I also don't know if it was open when I walked past, as I half expected this to be some kind of hipster magnet with queues of beards and topknots trailing out.
What's a visit to Tokyo without sushi. My brother liked this place, so in we went (after queuing for a while, of course!). I went a bit crazy and chose all the things that I wouldn't be able to obtain easily in Aus. So here are the raw baby sardines. I love that it's just a massive pile of dead creatures! I think the eyes are the cutest bit, though these had the extra appeal of being see through. It didn't taste that great though; for me this had a bit too much bitterness that wasn't smoothed out by any other flavour.
Next up, mounds of raw sakura ebi. More cute eyes of dead things!! These tasted better, though I gotta say, it is still a weird feeling to eat raw dead things whole.
A classic: giant cooked prawns.
Probably a snapper or variation thereof. I love looking at that red skin!
I love shellfish. When I saw all the shellfish available, I had to order some. They were also some of the more expensive items on the menu, but even then, my brother found the bill at the end to not be as high as he thought it'd be. And I'm so glad I got to try all these things! This was whelk. Too bad I'm posting this way later than I wanted, because I can't remember too much about how this tasted.
Akagai!! I love this because it's often presented as a curly thing. I've actually never seen the rest of it being served on sushi, so I have no idea how that tastes. I just know the curly and muscle are super tasty.
And the lovely geoduck! Yeah! Don't ever google this while someone else is looking cause it's so dodgy looking, but it tastes really good!
I've forgotten what this was, though knowing me, it's either sardine or mackerel.
Not quite the hotaru ika I was expecting, but still super adorable! Just look at that eye! Isn't it brilliant? And yes, eating this whole was a really weird experience for me, because I had to concentrate and not think about the fact I was consuming squid guts. It wasn't too bad, actually, I kind of liked it!
What's better than a super baby canele after dinner!
Even though cafes in Japan close late, they still close! After sushi we went to Verve, but they were closing, so we couldn't dine in. I wasn't too fussed. I took the Kenyan filter in a takeaway cup, and while it was quite take-away-y, it still tasted good. I loved the way they attached the information card with a tissue that doubled to soak up any leaks! Not that the coffee leaked. I still found it super cute, as if it was a scarf around my coffee.
Because I wasn't able to book a restaurant, my brother suggested that the budget be allocated to travelling outside of Tokyo instead. So a trip to Osaka it was!
First stop, Nara park for the deer. It was so cool seeing all the deer just chilling and unafraid of humans! My brother found that they were surprisingly not aggressive for food, probably because we were in holiday season so all the tourists had fattened up the deer already. So many uneaten biscuits were all over the ground!Also, taking a selfie with a deer is an incredibly difficult task. I couldn't manage to do it with my phone! But that's okay, because taking pictures of just the deer was enough! I love taking pictures of things.
Yes, that's not a deer. But look how adorable he is!
And the great deer exodus of 6pm, where they somehow just know to cross the road and to what was presumably their sleeping area.
The next day, Kyoto, where pigeons are real creatures that know how to perch on branches.
It's actually a really pretty view here.
Yeah gogo pigeons! Chase that food!
And one of the reasons we were here. % Arabica, and yes, their decor is as gorgeos as the pictures show. What I didn't realise was that it was an espresso based, takeaway only cafe. Of course, I was in the mood for dine in filter. Oh well, coffee is still coffee! There was a pretty long queue here, and the only inefficiency that I found really odd was that they used 1L milk cartons... for a predominantly milk coffee based customer base. That was really confusing, because I would figure that a juggler system with large volume milk bladders would have been more efficient!Apparently %Arabica's selling point is their latte art, which threw me off a bit, but I decided I may as well check it out. And yes, it's nice! But it's not why I drink coffee....As we were sipping away, my brother was rather bemused because passers by would often wonder aloud what the place was and why there was a queue.
What a cool picture. This is the bamboo forest, and I had a stroke of genius by realising I can do a panoramic shot upwards! It makes the bamboo look about as tall as it really is in real life.
Anyone up for tofu? My brother found this place on a previous visit, and it's easily recognisable because there's a little steam spout at the front. It made it a very inviting and homely kind of place. And it specialises in all things tofu. I love tofu, so I was definitely very interested in what this place had to offer.So many different textures here!!! My favourite was the teoke yuba, which is apparently soy milk skin. By name, it didn't sound particularly appetising, but once I had it, I realised it was pure genius - it was just like eating mozarella curds! Think of it like the outside of burrata. It was so delicious because the texture was spot on! Oh man, it was so good. This was a really satisfying lunch!
The warabi mochi. Oh wow. Yeah. This place knows how to make warabi mochi too. This was my first time having it, and even though I'd seen it before, I was always hesitant to try some in case the texture didn't match what I imagined in my head. But this, this impressed me so much! I imagine this is similar to how a water mochi cake is like. This was soft, and pretty much like... solid water. Sounds weird, but basically, it didn't have an obviously jelly like texture. It had a very melt in the mouth feeling, and "wet" but in the way that makes sense and is amazing.I like to think that I've eaten enough that I can sometimes recognise when something is incredibly good even though I've never had it before. Sometimes you can simply benchmark the first sample to be the best. This was such a thing, and it was confirmed when I sampled some warabi mochi later on somewhere else - it just wasn't as good, and was closer to the texture of jelly, which is not what I like from my warabi mochi. It has to feel like it's *just* bound together and simply "flows" apart in the mouth.
Next up, the Silver Temple. My brother had asked me the night before which of the two temples I wanted to visit, gold or silver, and after reading up the descriptions of both, I opted for silver. It was less glamorous, but boasted a better garden - one with many varieties of moss. Because lil' Gilg was on this trip with me, and he likes moss, I opted for Silver. It was a good choice, though the way the garden was designed meant that I couldn't have lil' Gilg taking a stroll through the greenery.
And of course, the famous Fushimi Inari shrine. Given that it was bustling with tourists, it was hard to get a shot of the orange pillar things without having people in it. Oh well! I love all the fox statues around, and the food offerings here were pretty hilarious. It's a wonderful and massive place and lovely to walk through!
With Kyoto done in a day, it was time to return to Osaka. So here is the obligatory shot of the most famous picture of Osaka!
And some late night coffee at Lilo Coffee Roasters. Here we met another Australian and had a great chat, though my brother and I aren't really stellar conversationalists. This Colombia Las Brisas was super tasty, though I noticed a lot of fines at the bottom of my cup. Luckily the fellow Australian offered to pass on my compliments, and managed to find out that they use a metal filter here for their pourovers, which explains how the fines got through.
Next day, more coffee! This time from Streamer Coffee Company. My brother said that this place was also famous for their latte art. What?! I was getting a little perplexed. How can you have a cafe that is famous for latte art? Isn't the quality of the coffee more important and a better indicator of the quality of the cafe? Maybe that's just my inner pretentious hipster though.It didn't get any better after I ordered the standard "Streamer Latte". They had nice La Marzoccos, but the normal advantages of showing off naked portafilters and having the extraction visible from across the counter meant that I saw the super dark, slow drips of espresso coming out. Um, where is my lovely smooth golden extraction that has a well defined stopping point? I was getting a little worried. That being said, I knew that the milk going in would probably smooth out some of the not so great bits of the espresso.Then came the shocker. A 12oz cup. Wow, that's a lot of milk. Why would you use that much milk? You only need 5.5 oz.... And sure, a complex pattern might justify the increased volume, but all I got was a swan, and even then I've had much better swans in smaller cups. My brother got a triple rosetta which was slightly nicer, but again, totally doable in a 5.5 oz cup. I was a little traumatised now, since my coffee was mediocre tasting with a mediocre latte art.
It didn't get much better when I decided that getting fluffy pancakes would be a novel experience. These were from a chain called Gram. They look super fluffy and light (though stacking them three high is not really a great idea since they fall rather quickly), but they were actually rather heavy. Maybe I shouldn't try these things from chains, but I hadn't done prior research (especially not for anything outside Tokyo; I didn't even have an Osaka/Kyoto coffee list because I never actually anticipated that I'd end up visiting) so this was as good as I was going to get on a whim.
Next up, Mel Coffee Roasters. They looked nice enough in the tiniest space, and advertised both light and dark roasts. I gotta say, light and dark roasts are really confusing. I know exactly what I want, but it's hard to gauge what a roaster means by dark and light unless you really know your coffee. I didn't think to check the colour of the beans to decide how I wanted my drink. All I know is that I preferred light roasts, and that they can display some amazing nuances of flavour when extracted properly, and that dark was the simpler of the two roasts for extracting as espresso. So I went for a light roast espresso. Guatemala was what they had (or recommended, I don't really remember). I would have probably chosen a Kenyan or Ethiopian since they're the ones that are the easiest to assess for flavour, but I don't mind trying to assess coffees from other regions.This was far to bright and lacked the body that I figure you can even extract from light roasts (think Seven Seeds, who roast far lighter than my liking but the flavours are technically still probably good). I definitely wanted more chocolate notes in this.
"Enlightened" by my morning cafe adventures, it was time to take in the street scenes. Like these lamps, which were really awesome looking and all had individual personalities, expressed by the different colours and styles.
I love seeing all the restaurants here with constructs of their food on display!
One of the specialties here is kushikatsu, basically, fried things on sticks. I'm so glad my brother took me here! Finally, Osaka redeemed itself! My brother and I ordered one of the sets, and the appetiser was this thing called a doteyaki, which had beef bits and konnyaku and was so flavoursome! I need to learn how to make this!
I actually took pictures of each individual stick before and after biting into them, but that would have been too spammy! While they don't look like much, they were really nicely fried with thin, not too oily batters and great quality ingredients inside. This was the Classic Soohonten with beef, prawn, scallops, lotus root, ginger, chicken meatball, whiting, rice cake, sausage.
And what do we find after lunch? What I believe to be some sort of psychological experiment to see what people do when they come across this poster.
Our visit to Osaka Castle Park resulted in many sakura pictures, but here are a couple of the animals that also enjoy this place.
After two jam packed days in Osaka, it was finally time to return to Tokyo. I really wanted a cool bento for the ride home, but it turns out all the ones with lots of raw seafood sell out really quickly. So the best I got was this crab meat, herring roe and salmon roe box. Turns out herring roe is actually really delicious!The specialty tea that Starbucks was offering however, was not as enjoyable as I wanted - the mango and mandarin tea frappe was far to sweet and artificial tasting!
I forgot exactly when I took this picture, especially because I'm too lazy to look up the metadata. But these were some tiny strawberries that tasted so sweet and amazing! I love the strawberries in Japan because the ones in Aus are always too sour! It was funny though, I ate them but couldn't find a bin to dispose of the green bits. It was then that my brother explained there were no "general rubbish" bins. That made it really awkward to eat things on the go. So I gave up and started eating all of the strawberry instead!
Yeah Shake Shack time! In the trendy suburb of Ebisu. I didn't know what to expect except that Shake Shack is very popular. There was a small line when we went, and they had a pretty interesting menu. Something about a grape shake?Anyway, I went for the classic burger, and decided the dessert of "e-bean-su" was also worth trying. We also got a side of normal and cheesy fries.I gotta say, that burger does not disappoint! I was very impressed by it! Not only was it cheap, it was also delicious! It reminded me a lot of Burger Project. In a blind taste test, I don't think I'd be able to pick out which was which... except that Burger Project's patty is better. I was seriously enjoying this!The E-bean-su concrete was also really tasty! Containing vanilla custard, red bean caramel sauce, marshmallow sauce, salted shortbread cookie, soy bean powder. Given my last taste of frozen custard was at Gojima and it was a hard block of frozen stuff, this was so much better, and felt like it was a really well made dessert. I didn't really enjoy the ice cream at Burger Project either. That being said, having a burger, chips and dessert is a bit much so I'd be happy with just the burger and chips. Or two burgers, or something.The chips didn't stand out as much as the burger so I don't remember exactly what they were like. All I know is that the cheesy fries were really heavy, so just the normal ones are a better choice.
And trying some woodberry coffee roasters. It was the second time (though apparently an earlier recount of this says I'd seen it multiple times?) I'd seen this roaster featured at a cafe, and my gut was telling me to visit, so in I went. They were actually really tasty and I enjoyed the Guatemalan as a filter!
And while walking around taking pictures of sakura, I also managed to find this dog in her majestic glory.
So when this sign is outside a shop... what do you think the inside features?
The ultimate mirror selfie stick... for whatever reason.
So after my disastrous coffee attempt at Streamer Coffee Company, and even my surprise about %Arabica being espresso and milk based, I wanted a tiny little milk coffee done properly. So here we were at Onibus, and I pointed to their piccolo glass and wanted a milk coffee rather than chance a massive latte if I just ordered from the menu. And so here it was! It still wasn't the same as getting a milk coffee from Aus though. This was a tad too light and the milk wasn't creamy or sweet enough for my liking. So I think I'll stick to filter coffees in Japan, cause they are really good at brewing that stuff.
Also, look what I found at Switch Coffee! My brother was pretty amazing and managed to end up back here from pure memory whereas I had no clue where I was. The coffee was OK, but the real excitement was seeing this scribble on the wall! I'm sure I saw this at the time Rene posted about it, but it must have been so long ago! So here's me taking a picture because then it's "proof" that I saw this for myself, right?
Dinner was a pretty long queue at a place that one of the baristas that I stalk, posted about a while back. It was a really interesting tonkatsu restaurant that only had two things on the menu: pork, and pork. The difference was the cut, with one being loin and one being fillet or something? Because my brother ordered for the both of us (I think it was just the "standard' order or something), I didn't have to agonise over anything and enjoyed watching all the staff in action.They had one person who kept track of everyone who came in, took orders and then called you when a seat was ready. Everyone else also had very specialised roles - one person to dip the pork in batter and fry it, another to simply cut the pork. And there were other people involved for all the sides - there must have been one person slaving away shredding a kazillion cabbages!I'm not sure exactly how juicy these fillets can get, but I was hoping for them to be slightly less cooked and more juicy than what I actually tasted. Or it could just be my imagination not matching what's possible in real life. Who knows, maybe one day I'll find out!
The next day, it was time to test out another burger joint. This time it was a place called The Great Burger, apparently one of the places that Ume burger/restaurant mentioned. It had a short line in the morning, and it was very American style. They had large plastic covered menus with just about every diner item you could think of. All I wanted was to try the burger, though one thing that caught my eye was the "hot pineapple juice", so I had to get that too. It turns out that really is hot pineapple juice, with a stick of cinnamon and some butter! It reminded me a lot of grilled pineapple, so I enjoyed it as a novelty drink.The burger, on the other hand... ugh. Like all burgers, it looked ok. But tastewise, it was awful. The beef patty had lots of chewy bits in it (and considering I like chewy bits and didn't like this, that's saying something) but was also flavourless. I don't understand. I've never had a flavourless beef patty before. Maybe McDonald's? But I haven't had a burger from there recently enough to actually confirm; and even then their condiments have flavour (even if its just cheap simple flavour like sweet tomato sauce and sour pickles). I could taste the salt and pepper around the patty, but not the patty itself. It was really, really disappointing.The chips were great though, so I ate all of that.If you need a burger, go Shake Shack.
Next up, Dominique Ansel, since it was on the list and we were in the area. Surprisingly, there wasn't a queue, so we could look at all the pastries on display and order at our leisure. I really loved the look of the bunny religeuse, so I definitely had to order that. It reminded me of the days when I studied French and we learned what a religeuse was.And of course, I had to get the cronut. Cause who doesn't order a cronut at Dominique Ansel! This time it was the violet lychee flavour. And my brother wasn't kidding when he said it was large and filling.I also got a tomato bread (which had to be eaten same day), which I ate the day after and it was so-so; not what I was expecting. It was bread with tomato filling rather than what I thought would be tomato flavoured bread.They had a large cute bun called "Mr. Roboto" which basically to me, looked like the face of a cyberman, so I had to get it. That was delicious even though I don't remember the filling! It had a really nice sugary crust, too.
And finally we ducked into one of the Blue Bottles, just cause. I was super seriously overcaffeinated, to the point where I couldn't actually finish my coffee here. But it was nice to have tasted some!!I still feel the smaller chains do coffee better. I guess I'm just a hole in the wall person than one who enjoys a large flashy joint.
And finally, white strawberries! That was quite a quest! Basically, I'd been wanting to eat a white strawberry on this visit, but at first, the ones I saw were too expensive for my liking so I didn't buy them, and then afterwards, I stopped seeing them/they were always sold out, so I was getting more and more prepared to fork out money for these.Luckily, on my second last night, I finally found some at a reasonable price! Though they weren't as white as I what I was hoping for. Are they worth it? They taste "white" in the same way that white peaches and nectarines compare to their yellow counterparts. It's the same kind of difference in flavour, if that makes sense. Basically, I still like the red ones better as I feel they pack stronger, bolder flavours.
And finally, I was left to my own devices on my last day in Japan, as my brother had work. He recommended an itinerary that took me through Ginza and headed towards Skytree, and I was actually impressed that I managed to get around, considering I took some detours, walked half of it, and then doubled back!Breakfast was at Tsukiji fish markets, where I got some tuna, uni and salmon roe on rice. It was the food I wanted for the shinkansen. Luckily it was a ticket dispensing machine, so I managed to obtain food without too much issue.
From there, I then trekked to Glitch, which was very high on my list because it's popped up on a few of my barista's lists. Oh man, they had a geisha, and it was an amazing one! Panama Esmerelda, can't go wrong. It was NICE after having so many full bodied Kenyans, this one was just so light and fruity and floral! Wow. Yay. I would have loved to try more coffee here and buy their tote bag too! But I wanted to make sure I didn't run out of money. So maybe next time!
I managed to end up in Akihabara halfway through the day, even though it wasn't the next step in my itinerary. Oh well! I spotted some magikarp taiyaki so I had to buy one!!! It was tastier than the taiyaki I had at the beginning of this trip.
I then remembered that I also had to visit the Tokyu Food Show, which was a massive food hall. They had so many delicious looking things!!!I bought a chirashi for breakfast the next morning since I had an early departure, but also spotted some pretty sakura jellies and desserts that I had to resist buying too many of.Then there was the wagashi!! I was hoping to get one of these in Kyoto, but didn't see any (though I didn't look particularly hard), and so I had to buy one here! It's softer than it looks and has sweet bean paste inside.
I was pretty much doing everything out of order now, but I wanted to make sure I got to About Life Coffee Brewers too. It's funny, from the pictures, I always imagined this being on the corner of a busy street, rather than facing a little side street! I enjoyed a tasty Ethiopian here, though I think they got my order mixed up or something and so apologised for the delay. There were some other coffee enthusiasts there and we had a chat about coffee in Australia, which was pretty fun.
I don't remember exactly how I ended up here again (same place as when I first visited Tokyo), all I know is that somewhere here I visited Asakusa to see the street full of kitchenware and plastic food supplies, which was pretty cool. Then I figure it was Skytree time, since I'd be able to catch the sunset.What I didn't know was how to get there... so I pretty much walked all the way! And even then I was confused as to how to enter into the actual Skytree ticket line so I had to do a few rounds before I finally got there.
That being said, I timed it pretty much perfectly since it would have been enough time for sunset. This was the shot looking up in the elevator :D
What a cool picture of the sun! It was hiding behind a light cloud hiding behind a dark cloud!I wasn't able to take very good pictures of the actual sunset though since there was far too much glass everywhere. I'd gotten so used to being on open air observation decks that I couldn't get a good shot through glass.I also couldn't be bothered waiting for the lights to go on for night time, so I left and headed towards Akihabara.
I pretty much spent the night oggling at pretty figurines because that's what Akihabara is amazing for. Saber on a bike didn't look as amazing as it did the first time I saw it, which was a good thing. I still wanted to spend stupid amounts of money on it and all the other figurines though!After shops began to close, I decided dinner was a good idea because I was starving. I hadn't actually eaten anything substantial since morning. My brother said there was a hokkaido ramen place, and I remembered walking past it, so I decided to take his recommendation. The problem was, I didn't remember exactly where I saw it, except that my brother's description of being near a kebab place made sense, but I couldn't even remember where the kebab place was!!! It was all good though, because I eventually did manage to find it (I couldn't find it on google probably because it wasn't listed as "hokkaido ramen").It was another ticket dispensing machine place, which was great, except I'd somehow forgotten how these things worked, possibly because this also had different sized buttons and I was totally missing the fact that the ramen options were the massive buttons - I thought they were simply pictures! It took me at least 5 minutes, asking the staff twice because I couldn't figure it out. Finally, I figured that the staff were pointing at the big buttons so I got my ticket for shio ramen and some gyoza.Oh man, this was delicious. I'm glad I came here! I found that Tokyo Base, Ichiran and this place were all good, but I don't have a preference for Ichiran's style of soup base. I didn't actually know that shio ramen could be this good until I tried it here! Definitely a place worth going back to.The gyoza were great, too. Not as good as the ones I remember my brother once making, but still super delicious!
And finally, passing the night in Shibuya. I spent ages agonising on whether I should go into the Starbucks or not, but I decided not to because there simply wasn't anything I wanted from there. Being on street level had its benefits though, because there was a photoshoot going on! That pretty red dress caught my eye so I joined in with all the other people who started taking photos.The couple were rushing out every time the lights turned green, and there'd be lots of shooting, then they'd have to run back as soon as the lights turned red again. This happened several times and was fun to watch, though very hard to capture a shot for - mainly because I wanted to showcase them in the crowd rather than isolation, so not getting heads in the way while keeping them in the spotlight and also showing the location was a challenge.It was a nice ending to my stay! I actually had such a blast exploring by myself that I kind of wish I had more days like that because I really started to take everything in rather than just follow my brother around blindly. Who knows, there might still be a next time!
Sakura, featuring lil' Gilg
Mainly a photo spam of pretty sakura. Gilgamesh wasn't the biggest fan of the flowers (he even jumped from a branch!), he's much more of a green and moss person.
Hanami partyyyyy!
