Memoirs of a Tourist – Random Things of Interest

This is the post in which I am going to talk about various things of interest. These things aren’t related to each other at all and it’s just going to be really random so don’t expect any sort of continuity. I could’ve just not talked about them at all of course, but then I like to share =)

What I did whenever I saw something interesting on the trip was take a couple of photos. This was mainly for myself to keep as a record; I like remembering everything about my trips and sometimes it’s the little odd incidents or sightings that make one trip different and unique from the next so it’s nice to have something to remember them by. I mean, it’s so nice to review photos of past trips and reminisce.

Alright, firstly we start off with a couple of wicked gravity defying hairdos. These guys were standing in front of us at a traffic light and we were full of admiration for their hairstyles because we know just how difficult it is to get hair to get like that, and stay like that. Top marks. There were, in fact, lots of guys standing around on the bridge with such hairstyles, handing out leaflets, soliciting girls and indulging in various other lovely pastimes.

Here are some standing by a bunch of bicycles in Dotombori. These ones had slightly tamer hair but had the loitering down pretty good. Unfortunately we only happened to take photos of guys and none of their female counterparts. Not that the ladies weren’t amazing in their own right; they were almost even more fantastic to look at with their pouffed-up hair ending in uniform curls, short shorts, long socks and high heels with the stepped on backs. That’s an odd thing about some of these Japanese girls; they obviously make so much effort with the way they look and yet when it comes to their heels they step on the backs of them rather than wearing them properly.

From guys with bicycles, we move on to pure bicycles. Every morning we’d cross the road to be greeted by this on one of the corners; loads of bicycles parked all down the pavement. Right on top of the “no bicycles” sign in fact hahaha! That made me laugh.

They even stuck a “no bicycles” notice on the lamp-post but did the cyclists care? Hahaha.

This was taken right outside our hotel. GM spotted the Statue of Liberty one day and I thought he was taking the piss when he nudged me and said “Look, do you see that Statue of Liberty?” and I said, “What??” because I thought that I’d misheard for sure but there it was. So they’ve got one too in Japan, Osaka to be specific.

This is a photo of our small but very livable hotel room. The bed looks tiny because it’s only a semi-double. Semi-doubles are cheaper. When I first saw it I thought we were going to have problems with lack of space but actually there was plenty of room for both GM and I.

See my Vicks and talcum powder on the table? Hehe.

One morning as we were strolling down Shinsaibashi-suji suddenly we heard some thunderous footsteps so we instinctively stepped to the side only to see around 10 policemen hurtle past us. Then fire engines started pulling up. The police and fire brigade are very quick in Japan as they had everything all cordoned off and set up and running within minutes.

And when they come out, they come out in force. There were about four fire engines and it looked like such a major big deal.

This was the place with the problem; a little ramen-ya. I don’t think the problem was that big actually because when we walked past it again later that afternoon it was opened for business as usual. All that commotion for a threat of fire, amazing. Over here they would have sent a couple of policemen round who would have taken 20 minutes of leisurely strolling to reach the scene. What a big difference.

You’ve all read about the yummy food that we had right? Well, not everything is yummy all the time. This was a omusubi (onigiri) that I bought. It looked interesting so I randomly bought it in addition to my normal favourites like mentaiko omusubi etc. I was really excited to try it because it looked so different; it was covered with something which I assume is seaweed but looked kind of like very soft green wool. And guess what, it actually tasted quite like wool. Like smelly, wet wool. You know when you get caught in the rain during winter and if the wind blows your wet scarf into your open mouth? Yup. In fact, it tasted worse. It was actually smelly and my scarves certainly aren’t smelly. It was more like smelly, wet sheep.

The filling in the center was okay, just salty, but the outside was so rank that I couldn’t eat more than one mouthful. So there you have it, not all Japanese food is tasty!

This is a very ugly thing that we saw that I had to show you all. Apparently it’s a Lucky God.

The display was quite good; the photo above was the head, and in this pic you can see the feet. They had phonestraps, hankies and even plushies. The plushies were so ugly that I was very taken with them and had to take a pic. Look how ugly they are! I love them! (But not enough to buy one and look at it everyday haha.)

Lastly, I finally got a pic of one of my idols at the airport. Sorry the pic is so blurry but it’s because I took it with my Ixus and I’d already gotten used to the DSLR’s fast shutter speed so I moved too quick after pressing the button. Anyway, I might as well do a plug for him. This guy is in a new drama this season, everybody please watch! Haha.

Memoirs of a Tourist – Dedicated to Food

One of my biggest driving forces to visit any country is its cuisine. I’ve been known to acquire sudden interest in a certain place just based on a review of a bakery or restaurant or type of local food. Let’s just say that if the food looks good and interests me, the town/city/country will have made it on my list of “Places to Visit Before I Die”. If the place has both good food and spectacular sights, it just makes it way further up the list and I’d be likely to visit it sooner.

If the place is called “Japan” then I’m likely to want to visit it at least a few times per year but have to limit myself to only annual visits. It should really be visits every two years because Japan is expensive but sometimes GM and I can’t help ourselves, especially if cheap tickets are staring us in our faces.

Before every trip I write a “food list”, i.e. the foods that I must have or try during the holiday. This is to ensure that I don’t forget anything and live to come home and regret it! Like I mentioned before, eating is serious business for me. Haha.

So this post will be about the food I had. The more uncommon stuff as well as certain foods that I know some of you will be interested in.

On this trip I really wanted to eat at Kua’ Aina because I heard it’s a burger place specialising in Hawaiian burgers and is only available in Hawaii and Japan. I had visions of big juicy burgers with slices of pineapple in them. I think they probably had those on the menu but when I got there and read about their avocado burger I imagined creamy cool avocado meshing with chunky beef patties and forgot about the whole Hawaiian pineapple thing. Oops. The burger was good though, properly chunky, and the fries were nice too, thin but crispy. I also liked that they provided tomato sauce and mustard in bottles on every table rather than in those oh-so-attractive individual plastic packs other restaurants shove at their customers.

On my first trip to Tokyo with GM many years ago I saw this bread snack at a cafe in Shibuya and really wanted to try it, being a bread fiend and all. Unfortunately that cafe was full up and we weren’t up to waiting so I left Japan without trying it and came home and regretted it for two years. On my next trip to Japan after that I went back to the same cafe and finally had it.

It’s essentially half a loaf or so of bread, toasted, drizzled with honey and topped off with a knob of butter. There are other toppings available out there, such as various ice-cream flavours, but not at the cafe I was at.

As you can see the inside of the loaf had been very conveniently sliced up into wedges which made for much prettier eating. I couldn’t finish all of it as it was half a loaf! And also I was saving my stomach for the other delicacies out there.

This is a traditional Japanese confectionery (wagashi) called warabi mochi. Warabi mochi is apparently a Kansai specialty. It’s made of bracken powder and eaten with kinako (toasted soybean powder) and kuromitsu (brown sugar syrup). I purchased it on a whim from a little stall selling lots of different wagashi.

That’s how it looked when I mixed it with the kinako, but before I put the kuromitsu on it.

It’s called a mochi but it didn’t have the same consistency as mochi as we commonly know it. I’d say the texture was more of a cross between jelly and mochi in that it was soft and slightly sticky but it was also light and refreshing like jelly. I was very pleasantly surprised as I was expecting a whole mouth full of goo so it gets a thumbs up from me!

Another exciting dessert I found was a mikan (mandarin orange) daifuku. The daifuku was quite big as it had a whole peeled mikan in it; it was just slightly smaller than a tennis ball. I was super majorly excited when I spotted it at a food counter and of course I had to buy it.

Here is a cross section of it. I’m sorry it looks a bit of a mess but the only utensils I had at the time was wooden chopsticks and I had to try to chop it in half with those. Didn’t quite work as you can see. Despite how it looks in this pic it was actually really nice. Very refreshing and despite the mikan probably having been sitting in the daifuku skin and accompanying sweet paste for a while it still tasted like it had been freshly peeled.

At the same food counter I bought a pack of three ichigo (strawberry) daifukus. For those of you who’ve read my previous Japan blogs, you’ll remember that I had one of these once before and I loved it!

Mmmmmmmm. Look at those lovely domes with the promise of a whole strawberry in each of them.

And they really do have a whole strawberry in each individual one. This cross section is cut a lot better because by the time I bought these I had been given a little plastic slicer with the warabi mochi several pictures above.

I ate these ichigo daifukus twice; once when I had the mikan daifuku, and another time when I had the warabi mochi. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I was able to find it so easily this time that it didn’t seem to taste quite as nice as on my previous trip. I found the sweet paste surrounding the strawberries to be overly sweet.

This is a picture of something we saw but didn’t eat; raw horse meat sashimi. It just didn’t look very appetising and I had better things to eat.

I had a kanidon (crab bowl). Lots and lots of crab meat on top of seasoned rice.

Actually it was only okay. The kani didn’t taste of much, perhaps it wasn’t the right time of year for crab or Osaka wasn’t the right place for it. But it looked gorgeous though.

On our first day of the trip we walked down Shinsaibashi-suji and I was very excited to see that their McDonalds had a matcha and oreo McFlurry. I love trying different flavours of stuff that isn’t readily found back where I live and I vowed to GM that I’d have at least one before I left. Thinking that it was in every McDonalds, I went to the one in Den Den Town one afternoon when we needed to rest our legs but to my surprise they didn’t have this particular flavour! In fact I only saw it at the branch in Shinsaibashi-suji, which of course made me want to have it all the more haha.

And I finally had it. It had green tea syrup and bits of oreos in it and was pretty good. But then I like all things green tea.

I just had to show you this pic of a little octopus in one of GM’s bentos. It looked so freaky but it tasted good haha.

One night I was dying for some chocolate cake, don’t ask me why. I just wanted a big slice of stodgy but moist chocolate cake without any of that ganache or cream stuff to spoil the actual cake. So we walked round and round the sweets section of a department store food basement and I finally found a chocolate cake that wasn’t covered in cream.

To accompany me in my dessert eating so I wouldn’t look quite as greedy, GM bought himself a cream puff from the same patisserie on the spur of the moment.

The chocolate cake turned out not to be the main event and instead the cream puff was the star. GM spotted a sign next to it and he was thinking to himself “Eh…. I know those people…” followed by “Eh….. I know that show…..” and then finally “Oh my god! I know that cream puff!”

We’ve been watching a Japanese drama that’s airing this season called Zettai Kareshi (Absolute Boyfriend) and it’s set in a sweets company and that cream puff (or shu kurimu as they call it in Japanese) is kind of integral in the storyline as it was created by the heroine. In fact, this show is what made GM want to eat a cream puff as the actor in it makes it look so tasty when he eats it, but he would never have imagined that he would find THE cream puff. So naturally we were thrilled.

And you’d think that a cream puff featured on a drama would be all hype and gimmick and not much in the way of taste, but you’d be wrong. It was wicked yummy (GM’s words). The pastry was as light as choux should be, and the cream wasn’t like the normal whipped cream filling but was creamier and with a distinct vanilla flavour, almost like a cross between custard and cream and yet better than both. Even if you were really full you could still eat the whole thing and enjoy it. Really delicious, the best cream puff we’ve ever had.

Incidentally, the chocolate cake was crap. It was stodgy like I wanted, but it was also dry and quite surprisingly, didn’t taste very chocolatey. Perhaps if you sprinkled cocoa powder over cardboard you might get the same effect.

With the huge number of big and little meals we had per day and all the massive amounts of shopping we did, I didn’t have much time to eat any snacks nor have any luggage space to bring snacks back home. Here is one of the few I managed to smuggle. Sakuranbo (cherry) mini chocolate sticks. They’re little chocolate sticks peppered with specks of cherry flavoured jelly bits. Pretty nice.

I also bought this Brazilian pudding flavoured Pocky because I liked the packaging.

The Pocky sticks themselves were also pretty funky being light cream with a black design. They taste coconut-y. They’re alright, I’m sure they sell them in Singapore and Australia so you guys can buy some and try it too.

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Memoirs of a Tourist – In Search of Kobe Beef

I’m going to blog about our only daytrip for this holiday which was a little excursion to Kobe. (Actually it wasn’t a daytrip seeing as we only went for lunch. After which we hotfooted it back to Umeda, Osaka for more shopping, yay!)

We’d had a Kobe beef meal the previous time we were in Japan in October 2007 and it was really excellent in terms of quality, taste and value for money so we thought we’d go back to the same restaurant again. The thing is, that restaurant’s website had been down when I’d checked even before we left for Japan so having misgivings that something was amiss, whilst we were at an internet cafe that morning checking our emails I took the time to find another restaurant nearby and kind of drew myself a weeny map on a weeny bit of notepaper for directions. Just in case.

Which was a really lucky thing as it turned out because after trekking for a bit in the blazing sun (aargh), we turned into the road where the restaurant should have been and walked all the way down it. Didn’t see it. So we walked all the way back up again. Didn’t see it still. After to-ing and fro-ing a tiny bit more we finally realised that they’d probably closed down. Oh dear.

Onto Plan B. I yanked out my tiny bit of notepaper and with much optimism, headed off to my newly researched restaurant armed with a map that consisted of two street names and a drawing of 5 road branches. If that many at all really.

But what do you know, I found it! As soon as I saw this big road sign I knew I was on the right path. Incidentally, most of the temple photos you’ve seen in the previous two posts were taken along the way to and back from the Kobe beef restaurant.

We went in to see a Japanese family of four being told to return in an hour’s time. Which wasn’t really a great start because after all that walking in the hot weather I was kind of ready to sit down with a tall glass of something nice and cold and fizzy. But we were lucky again because we didn’t have to wait at all as they had two remaining spaces at one of their teppan counters!

The restaurant was quite small with four teppan counters seating 8 each and hosted individually by its own chef. All the counters were full except for our two spaces obviously. We weren’t just lucky in terms of available seats though, we were lucky with our timing too as the chefs for each counter wait for a whole new set of 8 diners to be seated before starting each lunch course and we were able to be seated because we’d arrived just as our particular chef was starting his stint.

We started with a salad which had a really nice dressing, kind of tart but not unpleasantly so. It really whet the appetite for the good stuff ahead.

Next we got some potato soup. I guess it was meant to be cream of potato. It tasted neither of cream nor of potato. I’d say it was pretty much like milk warmed up. Total failure. But the crunchy cornflake things on top were a nice touch.

Our chef showed us our piece of beef. Nicely marbled.

And then he set about cooking it. We had ours rare.

Meanwhile he also cooked our veggies, tofu, konnyaku and fatty bits from our piece of beef.

When our beef was done we were served rice and pickles. These pickles need a special mention because they were the best pickles I’ve ever had. Really crunchy and not overly salty or sour. Just right in fact. Perfect.

We were served our beef in two lots, this was the first lot. We had choices of mustard, soya sauce, salt and pepper as condiments. The chef recommended that we eat one piece with mustard first, then one with mustard dipped in soya sauce, followed by another with salt and pepper to get a taste of what the beef was like with each condiment. My favourite was the salt and pepper.

The beef was good, really tender compared to what we’d normally get in other countries.

However, please compare with the beef we’d had previously in October 2007. That was definitely more melt in the mouth. I also loved the chunkiness of the pieces. The beef was of a higher grade though so it had a higher fat content, hence the utter meltiness. It was akin to eating warm beef flavoured butter; our teeth cut through it with perfect ease and it almost required no chewing, sliding down our throats ever so smoothly. It was gorgeous.

This time though we’d gone for the lunch menu which had not quite as high a grade of beef which is why the quality was slightly lower. It was still fatty and melt in the mouth but not to the same extent; it had more of a meaty texture and wasn’t nearly as smooth. It was still good for the price though and definitely much more tender than any steak I’ve had outside of Japan.

Here’s our chef at work.

Here’s the chef we’d had previously. Both the chefs were very nice. The lady chef went about her business quietly and professionally whereas with the male chef in the new restaurant the cooking was more of a performance, as in, “You’re here with me for lunch so let me serve you and show you what you’re going to have”. He took the time to tell us the recommended way to eat the beef, where the ingredients were from and so on. At the end he bowed and thanked us for coming to their restaurant.

I don’t mind either way of service, both were nice in their own way.

Remember our bits of fat trimmed off the beef? They were sliced up and fried with beansprouts. It was alright, if you like eating beansprouts and crunchy bits of pure oil. Not really my thing however.

GM took this pic to show you all just how well he polished up his meal haha. Just in case I blogged about it you see. (Doesn’t he know me well…..)

We finished with a scoop of grapefruit sorbet which was surprisingly light and sweet. I was expecting it to be more cloying and tart the way some sorbets are made, presumably to overcompensate for the non-creaminess but this was a really pleasant surprise.

It was a lovely meal that put smiles back on our faces (because trust me, trekking to a non-existent restaurant can really spoil one’s mood) and set us up beautifully for the rest of the day ahead!

More Postcards from Japan

I like looking at my pictures.

They make me feel slightly like I am back on holiday in Osaka, stuffing my face and walking, walking, walking until my legs feel like they’re about to break. I must say I only ever enjoy exercise when I’m on holiday; it’s because it doesn’t feel like exercise (read: torture) when with practically every step there’s something new to take my mind off the pain of physical exertion. Haha.

There were many times on this holiday when I wished I had a bigger stomach so I could eat a lot more. I don’t think I can ever get enough of Japanese food, ever. I mean, I pack away loads on every single holiday no matter the destination but in Sardinia I actually kind of had had enough of pasta and seafood after a while, and we’re talking really good pasta and excellent seafood. In Osaka though, I could’ve kept going and going, if only my stomach wasn’t fit to bursting after a mere three or so consecutive meals hahaha.

GM’s favourite salmon and ikura don

Kaiten sushi place

Spicy ramen

A bento that consisted of lots of simmered food items – kind of similiar to the shojin ryori we’d had in Mt Koya last year only this wasn’t vegetarian

Negi toro nigiri (minced fatty tuna topped with spring onions)

Salmon nigiri

Uni nigiri – sea urchin, my favourite

Entrance to Namba Parks – an upmarket shopping mall and office complex

Prizes in one of those arcade clamping machines

Sake barrels at a shrine

Pachinko parlour

I like to imagine that the young girl had packed all her worldly possessions into her lacy pink suitcase with the fancy bow, tonged her hair ever so carefully so not a hair was out of place and gone out into the big, bright world that seemingly promises so much opportunity with her best foot forward in pursuit of fame, fortune and adoration. She meets with an older man whom she believes with her innocent heart will set her along the right path, little knowing that he’s not even a small fish in the game as his claim to success is being the distant cousin of a record executive. Hence the bizarre (but strangely apt if you knew his circumstances) choice of having a business discussion in Italian Tomato, a cheap little cafe where weary salarymen and travellers drop in for 10 minutes just to quench their thirst and rest their feet before venturing back out into a real and better world. However, our young would-be princess of the entertainment world doesn’t know this about her potential rescuer from a dull life in the suburbs, and she drinks in his every word with earnestness and pure, unadulterated hope.

The obasan at the next table sucks on a cancer stick during a break in her pachinko parlour crawl (she’s just been to the one two pictures up)

The Dotonbori canal

Road in Den Den Town

Namba Parks – interesting architecture

Awesome Gundam shopfront

They think they’re the King of J-rock and if you kind of agree you can purchase a demo CD for 500 yen

Daimaru’s window display

Shinsaibashisuji by night

Namba Parks again

Dude at a ramen-ya making GM’S ramen

Maisie sits by the window

Strawberry shortcake – besides strawberries the middle of the cake had a little treasure mound of peach slices and juicy mikan, a lovely surprise

Awww

Kinryu Ramen in Dotombori