Blog of the Morning Calm

Japan in My Mouth

Trying as many different foods as we could was a big part of our recent trip to Japan. Sadly, so was being on a tight budget. But we managed to get some seriously tasty things in our bellies, and a few not so brilliant things. Here is (almost) everything we ate on our trip, in chronological order for some reason. I'll keep the writing brief to make room for the visual feast - enjoy!

Ok, don't judge. The ferry arrived really early and
nowhere else was open! McDonalds is also the
second cheapest place we found in Japan for coffee
...after Burger King.

Despite the many, many fast food places,
everyone was so thin - even the pigeons!

Fukuoka is famous for its Gyoza -
pretty much the same as the delicious Mandu
we've been eating all year in Korea.

Our budget required us to eat pot noodles and other
such junk from marts for one meal a day, so here
are the chowmein style noodles we grew to love.
Unlike Korean ramen, you drain the water away
so these ones are dry, rather than soupy.

Snacks on snacks! On the left is a "Big Thunder" bar
which is like a bourbon biscuit covered in chocolate.
Yum! On the right are some strange jelly sweets
with weird fruit flavours and a texture not
dissimilar to raw fish...interesting.

Final meal in Fukuoka - ramen. Mine were a spicy kind...

...and Dave's were traditional. The broth was rich and creamy
with a subtle pork flavour, to which we added pepper, chilli...

...pickled ginger, garlic, bean sprouts and something
else we didn't recognise or particularly like.
Best noodles we've ever eaten!

In Kyoto we found a lovely place to get Bento
boxes for lunch. Rice, salad, coleslaw, radish,
fried chicken, spaghetti and some weird
brown seed jelly. A lovely meal.

We didn't eat here but check out the whole
octopuses on sticks, the stuff that looks
like brains and the eels with wiggly spines.

Marinated raw fish on sticks for only £1.50!
Cuttlefish, salmon, tuna and scallops.

Dave tried the tuna in soy and mirin. Not my fave but he loved it.

Kind of like bulgogi beef with onions, on rice...

Which you could then add miso soup to once you
had eaten half, although Dave preferred it before.

I wish we had eaten one of these barbecued quails
but they were sooooo expensive and so tiny!

Steamy hot sake - perfect way
to warm up at the end of the day.

Tempura shrimp, squash, chilli, Japanese potato
and lotus root - such a light batter.

SALMON! I had been craving this for months and
it didn't disappoint. Fabulous.

Very small, traditional feeling bar where we
had the above 3 things. What a find.

IT WAS 6AM! NOTHING WAS OPEN!
Our first meal in Tokyo - a McHotdog.
It tasted just as you would imagine it to.

Miso soup and green tea to accompany our...

Sushi! All of this for £6 at a standing sushi bar.
I'm not a huge fan but it was pretty good and
Dave love it, especially the squid and shrimp.

Breaded pork cutlet/cheesy hamburger on rice
with curry sauce. So much nicer than the Korean
version - the curry had a lovely yoghurty tang.

Lotteria is the poor man's McDonalds.
In Korea, at least, it's horrible.
We didn't go - we have some standards.

Salad, Iranian style steamed rice and Gheimeh, which is a
traditional lamb and split pea stew, courtesy of our hosts,
Nazrin and Morteza. Delicious food and such a lovely couple!

A 2L bottle of thousand island dressing.
I think Morteza is addicted!

Lake Kawaguchiko, near Mt Fuji. Second experience
of Japanese ramen, which were ok but definitely
not as good as the ones in Fukuoka.
We also had more dumplings, fried chicken salad,
and a fried fish - for extra protein.

More snacks! "Strong Zero" is definitely the cheapest
way to get drunk in Japan. It's like apple juice but 8%
and after the first taste it goes down way too easily.
The we had some sweets, biscuits and chocolates.
Nothing special.

KING CUP NOODLE!
By far the biggest pot noodle I have ever seen.
Bits of meat and prawns, plus Dave added an egg
and a tin of tuna!

BUBBLE TEA! Anyone who read out China posts
will remember my obsession with this stuff.
This time it was hot and as delicious as I remembered.
I can't wait to go to Taiwan, where it was invented!

More sushi. And at the back is some Szechuan
cucumber which was really nutty and spicy.

Fried noodles and breaded chicken on sticks.
If you remember out last trip to Tokyo, we
ate a a restaurant where you ordered your food
using a touchscreen TV. Well this was that chain,
but we weren't as impressed by out food choices.

Breakfast in Osaka. There is on Subway in Korea
so we couldn't resist. We just wanted the Sub
of the day but it was veggie avacado (yuk!)
so we got cajun chicken, and teriyaki chicken,
which is a Japanese flavour, right?

Osaka should be renamed "O-snack-a"
because it is famous for Takoyaki, a
popular street snack of fried doughballs
filled with octopus. These stalls where
EVERYWHERE!

There were more balls on this street
than in a Bangkok brothel!

Dave's first taste...

I didn't have one but I'm told they are really tasty but very rich,
and since you can only buy a minimum of 6,
it's best to share them or it can get a bit sickly.
Sorry Dave, but you know how I feel about tentacles...

Another Osakan delicacy - Okonomiyaki.
It's a kind of pancake made from varoius things, such as
cabbage, onion, pork and shrimp, that is fried on a
hot plate at your table. It was good but nothing amazing.
Still, it was something new.

We went to a famous kushikatsu (see below)
restaurant and had an amazing beef stew for
our starter. It didn't taste Asian, more like a
rich beef stew from home. Of course there was
the surprise Asian twist of tasteless jelly cubes.

Here is the kushikatsu. It is various things on sticks, coated
in a special batter and fried. You then dip it in a "communal"
pot of sauce that is kind of like water HP sauce.
There is a strict no-double-dipping rule.
We had (left to right) squid legs, beef, quails eggs, aubergine
and a meatball. The best, hands down, were the eggs.
They were soooo creamy and delicious...I want more!

Remind you of anyone? It's the spitting
image of Ricky Gervais, as David Brent,
about to do his infamous dance!

Cinnamon and black pepper choco sticks
that I think they suggest you use as drinks
stirrers. Very unusual - I am sending some
home for the Pascoe and Moss adults to try.

More sushi! This time from a department store.
Too much wasabi for my liking, but not bad.

WAGU BEEF in Hiroshima! Wagu is the name given
to Japanese beef, famous for the marbled fat.
Kobe beef is Wagu beef that comes
from the town of Kobe.

Here is the beef in all its glory. It was delicious.

A small island off the coast of Hiroshima
is famous for its oysters.

Dave and the other traveller we were with agreed
they were the best oysters they had ever eaten.

Yakitori = grilled meat on stick.

HUGE individual wotsit-esque crisps.
One was crab flavour...weird.

Dave's final meal in Japan - why he wants to
remember this, I don't know. It was a spicy
chicken sandwich from 7eleven.

Kyoto-n-fro

We arrived in Kyoto a little worse for wear after spending the night sleeping on a bus, in an effort to save money. Japan is the home of sex dolls, sushi and sake, so you can see why it gets expensive…

We bought a city bus pass and went about trying to explore as much of Kyoto as humanly possible. Our first stop was a temple (of course!)

Three Storey Pagoda - pfft

We saw what we now believe to be a graveyard and we shamelessly took some photos. I find the way different cultures handle death to be interesting, particularly here, where there seems to have been much care taken in dressing these gravestones in some kind of winter clothing / bib (we assume).

Next stop was another temple called the Silver Pavilion and it was very pretty and serene. However, we arrived with a group of 300 school kids so we had the choice of rushing through ahead of them or waiting for them to get out of our line of sight. We chose the latter, hence my forlorn expression, whilst I waited in the cold.

This tree had some strange fungus growing on it...

Next up was Nijo Castle, which we arrived at 30 minutes before it closed. Most tourist destinations seem to close very early, which was frustrating as we had a bus pass, a tight schedule, and a hunger for sightseeing. We rushed to the main gate and inside to see the painted decor of past emperor's palaces (no photos allowed!) For me the most interesting thing were the floorboards inside the palace. As we walked around, they creaked and squeaked in a very unique, almost musical way. There was a sign explaining that they were named after the mockingbird, and that the bird-like chirping noise they made was a way to warn the inhabitants of any intruders. And sure enough, even with my ninja socks on, I couldn't move without tweeting (or updating my facebook status).

Main Gate was under Restoration -
They didn't tell us that in the info desk!

Surroundings were cool - weird straw tree!

It's a moat... and not the kind that kill policemen.

It's a heron!

That evening we were couchsurfing in a flat owned by our new friend, Masato. He was a great guy from Japan who has couchsurfers round practically every day and at one point there were 4 of us there! Couchsurfing, for those unaware, is a fantastic way of meeting new people local to the area you are visiting, while benefiting from some free accommodation and swapping travelling stories. Our first day in Kyoto hadn’t been as intriguing as we had hoped, because the temples were quite touristy and our lack of knowledge about them meant we didn’t fully understand the history and traditions linked to them. That, and the fact that they all charged around 500 Yen (£4.50) per person for entry – a bit cheeky and a little pricey for my liking.

The next day Masato pointed us in the direction of a bamboo trail and off we went. It ended up being a lovely, calm walk where we stumbled upon a free temple (high five!) and had a relaxed start to the day.

Hey, free temple!

Bamboooooooooooo

Next on our list was a shrine (again free!!) with a bajillion gates – I use the term bajillion, in all it’s descriptive glory, because no other word quite fits.

The first gate of many...

Interesting Bamboo hand washing thing

I'm seeing double. Four sets of gates.

Katie and gates

David and gates.

More gates!

Bill Gates!

This had an interesting story. You should imagine your wish,
and then imagine yourself picking up the rock and feeling
the weight of it. You then pick the rock up. If it is
lighter than what you imagined, your wish will come true.

Here is a price list if you want a gate added to the row, with the biggest and most expensive costing around £11,000.

We tried to see another pagoda but we arrived after 4 and it was too late – we did sneak some photos of it from the outside though!

Sneaky Pagoda!

The evening soon came and we ended up exploring some of Kyoto at night, including the old Geisha district and what was described in the Lonely Planet as “one of the most beautiful streets in Asia”. You be the judge.

Not the best photos I admit.
But also not the most beautiful street in Asia.

Nightlife area!

Then we were back on a night bus and heading to Tokyo.

Woop woop.

Japan - Take 2: Day 1

You may have noticed a silence coming from the blog in the last couple of weeks. It wasn’t because we had been detained in a North Korean prison camp, but actually because it was winter vacation time and we were in Japan. And so instead of blogging inane details of our existence in our freezing schools while bored brainless, we were actually living it large(r) in the Far East.

So we will quickly sum up Japan in one word, like we did with China (Rammo). Japan = awefull. That’s right – new word coinage time: awefull.

Awefull (adj) – David and Katie had an awefull time in Japan. Japan was so brilliant and filled them with so much awe that the usual adjectives, such as ‘awesome’ and ‘wonderful’ are not sufficient. Antonyms: Awful

It all started with a ferry ride. Now, when it comes to travel, I like to be on time. In fact, I like to be early. I would much rather sit in an airport for an hour waiting for the plane to leave than at home twiddling my thumbs and then dashing to make it just on time. So I was packed and ready to go by 4pm on the day of the ferry. Dave came over and we did the final packing together and we were all set to leave by 5:30pm. The port was 45 minutes away and we had been told we had to check in at 6:30pm for boarding at 7pm, but Dave insisted we didn’t need to arrive until 7:30pm because the ferry wasn’t leaving until 10:30pm and so what was the rush? I was very annoyed by this because if there is one thing we have learned this year it’s that you can’t assume anything in Dynamic Korea! So after much bickering and sulking I managed to persuade him to leave in time to arrive at 7pm. 10 minutes before we got to the ferry port Dave got a phone call from the check-in people wondering where we were and why we were late. Ha! I was right! We rushed through check-in, only to sit and wait for boarding to start at 7:40pm, and then we were stuck on the ferry for a whole 3 hours before it even departed! By the time it pulled out of the dock, all of the shops and restaurants had closed, and Dave and I had polished off the 2 bottles of soju and 2 beers we had brought for the journey. We promptly fell asleep within minutes of leaving Busan and had the first of many disrupted nights’ sleep.

We arrived the next morning in Fukuoka, a little worn out and tired but extremely excited! We dumped our bags in a locker as we were only staying in the city for 15 hours, and then started exploring the area.

We found the first of many Japanese temples and saw a five storey pagoda!

Moss Trees

We continued walking and came across a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony. Much like the Koreans and Chinese, the Japanese have a fancier, bigger Western style wedding and then a small, close family, traditional ceremony.

We stumbled across what looked like the pissing boy statue that’s famous in Belgium.

We then went to Robosquare – a free exhibition in a department store where we saw a robot dog performance and various other cute and interesting creations.