Archive | April 2015

Japan 2015 Day 4 – Dinner!

Gosh, we had such a hard time thinking of where to go for dinner this night. We finished Disneyland pretty early and walked back towards the train station when we decided to walk through the Ikspiari Mall and I am SO glad we did! I didn’t realize this mall was Disney owned at first. We first headed to the food court but there was limited choices and not a lot of English menus around. We found a Krispy Kreme and had to eat some. Check out Kristian’s donut…

Sakura Donut! Pretty right? He seemed to enjoy it. It looks a bit too sweet for me…but that’s just me. The pre-dinner dessert was followed by a dinner at Hakata Ippudo. This is a pretty good ramen chain in Japan. My first experience in this restaurant was in New York. I wish they would open this in Hawaii!

Seasoned Bean Sprouts

Pickled Ginger

Pickled Mustard Plant

The classic ramen

I got the one with everything, of course. The black liquid is probably the black garlic oil. This bowl of noodles was good. Nothing that knocked my socks off but definitely a nice bowl of noodles. They were very fast and efficient, glad we came to this restaurant for dinner!

Three must go-to stores at this mall:

Disney Store: Why? If you’re looking for tsum tsum and a lot of the more traditional Disney stuff, go to this store. Big store, good selection!

Natural Kitchen: I think I might have bought out their entire stock. This is a very very very very (very?) cute kitchen item store. It’s ALSO a 100 yen store. I was in heaven. The cutest kitchen accessories for 1, 2 or 3 dollars. I didn’t want to leave! I bought tons of stuff. I love this store. Good thing I didn’t hold back, I didn’t find this store anywhere else.

Laurel: This store is a bit like a bath and body works shop but very minimalistic and simple, nothing over-powering. They had an aroma diffuser running outside of their store and it just drew me in. It was such a wonderful scent and I was so tempted to buy it. But I knew I didn’t have an aroma diffuser at home so I left sadly. As the days went by, the scent never left my mind so I found the another location of the store in Harajuku. THANK GOD. It was a bit hard to find but I totally bought the oils (Savon and Cherry) and haven’t regretted it a bit. In fact, I’m fretting about what to do when I run out of this oil. I’m crazy like that. If Laurel came to Hawaii, I would be in heaven.

Day 5 is Shibuya and it is the post I am dreading to write! It was a really bad day, the worst day of the trip so I’m not exactly looking forward to talking about it. But it must be done! Hope you are all doing well!

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Japan 2015 Day 4 – Food!

Apr28

Ah yes! The long-awaited final Tokyo Disneyland food post. So sorry it’s taken a bit longer to update these…these posts are definitely more time consuming than my usual posts! It’s been hard to sit down and concentrate lately, lots going on. I didn’t eat as much as I did at DisneySea (thank god) but we still got a lot of good eats in! The biggest surprise at Disneyland? Well, remember how I told you that there was an ice cream cart every five steps at DisneySea? Ice cream was a lot harder to find at Disneyland! I was surprised by that. But that’s okay because I ended up finding the Toy Story alien mochi balls I wanted and they were everything! I should have gotten a second serving…lol. Let’s get to it!

Breakfast. LOL, we just really wanted some regular hot dogs. So here we were! Sorry, I had to giggle at this sign. Yes, I am an adult.

Ratatouille Hot Dog Set, this was like almost $10. Dorothy, we’re not at Costco anymore…

So what is a Ratatouille Hot Dog? It’s just a regular hot dog with tomato sauce and pesto drizzle…oh and chunks of zucchini! It was okay, I think I would just grab a regular hot dog next time.

Just wanted to get a cute picture of a menu. I wasn’t hungry so I didn’t get anything. If I were to order, I would have gotten the Tapioca Drink – no question. And of course the roasted chicken on a Chinese bun. Too cute.

The alien mochi balls! They were SO good. Very very very soft mochi skin filled with different flavor creams.

Strawberry (the best one)

Vanilla/Custard – good!

Chocolate! Ahhh…I wish I could eat these again. They were perfection.

Our lunch was at an expensive buffet restaurant called, Crystal Palace Restaurant. A bit pricey at $25 but in the end, it was actually a super good deal for Disney standards. It gave us a comfortable place to sit for about 2 hours and we had unlimited access to food and drinks. We could easily spend $25 ala carte in the park for much less.

How cute is this plate! Round 1. The variety isn’t that great but the food was good enough.

So this was the special for the day. It was a sausage….on a chicken bone? It was so weird. I mean, they really had to clean up these chicken bones to use as a stick for the sausage. And then it makes you wonder where the meat of the chicken is…because I don’t know if it was in the sausage. The sausage tasted pork-ish.

I got creative and got the soup bowl to make a curry and rice bowl. Easier to eat this way.

Round Two. Hahaha I guess I liked the spaghetti and fish. Actually the fish thing is still going on even now, I wouldn’t mind some fish and chips right about now.

Oh Jesus. Round Three! I needed to get this to get a picture of the carrot.

I got my Mickey face!

Dessert was fresh fruit and jelly. Knowing the price for fresh fruit in Japan – this was a treat!

I talked about the popcorn in my past post. The popcorn mania in Japan is beyond. Everyone had a bucket around their neck – it was like a cult. A cult that I joined. I knew I wanted the classic Mickey bucket but I needed to find my popcorn flavor. It was fate this day. I found the Mickey Bucket with the Shoyu Butter flavor. My mind was made up. How was the popcorn? It was good! Nice and fresh. The seasoning was like instant ramen MSG…lol. I gotta say, the popcorn stayed relatively fresh. I even like transferred some into a ziploc bag to bring home and it didn’t taste too bad when I got home. Disney really knows how to make money. Everyone definitely bought into this craze. There was no line at the orange marmalade flavor stand which I can understand behind completely (blech!).

We ate a pretty late lunch so we actually ended up eating dinner at a restaurant in the Ikspiari Mall. I didn’t realize it was a Disney owned mall and I LOVE that mall. I will share the dinner posts and some thoughts on the mall in my next post!

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Japan 2015 Day 4 – Disneyland

Apr21

Day 2 of Disney! We were pretty excited for this day. We even left DisneySea a bit early the day before to rest up for today. I was excited to see what Disneyland had to offer. We had a great time at DisneySea so I figured Disneyland would offer the same experience. Well, the staff and sights were definitely great. Like I shared before, we expected more Tsum Tsum stuff here but the stores basically sold the same items as the stores in DisneySea! The lines were once again super long, some of them were 3 hours long! Good thing I don’t ride rides.

Time to head into the happiest place on earth! Wait, does that apply to all Disney sites??

I loved seeing all the balloons! How fun is the job of the girl who gets to hold the huge bunch of balloons? The Disney castle can be seen as we walked in. Disneyland was definitely busier than DisneySea.

New Orleans! Cute stuff. Wish I could go up there and take pictures…hehe

Another ride I could handle. It’s a Small World. Can I just say that those dolls are some kind of creepy? It was an…interesting ride.

My first Japan Cherry Blossom experience was at Disneyland! Maybe it IS the happiest place on earth! It was the only trees in bloom on the entire property but they were SO pretty. I was very happy to have seen them!

Sorry, so many pictures of flowers. I didn’t take much pictures of the park!

I did of course take pictures of the castle. Who wouldn’t?? It’s so beautiful and looks just like the one before Disney movies. Enchanting.

Do you know what this is? It’s a popcorn holder. Every park had different stations with different popcorn flavors and different character containers to hold the popcorn. You could of course buy popcorn to eat out of a paper bag but who does that at Disney?? I was too tempted and finally bought this. It was so cute. And yes, I wore it proudly around my neck. I’ll share more about this popcorn container along with the food in the next post!

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Japan 2015 Day 3 – Food!

Apr20

Warning: The following pictures may induce a food coma. Enter at your own risk. And yes, this is what I ate. No shame in my game. Okay, there is shame because I realized there are a lot of pictures as I uploaded them for this post. But hey, that’s basically why we went (right?). So…good…drool…

Meat Pie! First “snack” of the day. Delicious mince meat filling in a very flaky pastry crust. It was like a gourmet puff pastry hot pocket. Delicious!

Sausage in a Bun – I guess this is their version of a hot dog? Does not taste like a hot dog at all, definitely a very Japanese sausage. Tasted okay, not something I would get again.

I was too curious about this one! Sea Salt Ice Cream!

It was pretty good! Not really salty. Vanilla Ice cream, strawberry jam all in a wafer like shell. The wafer is very bland and felt like we were chewing on styrofoam but it tasted fine!

Churro – this was not great. Also! It’s one of the few things shaped into Disney shapes! You can’t tell looking at this now, but it’s actually a Mickey Mouse face shape. I thought the churro was a bit too spongy, didn’t taste right.

Famous Disney Turkey Leg – I had to get it. Had to. Even if it’s for the experience! Well, they cooked it perfectly. Very juicy and tender. This is a very smoky tasting turkey leg. It tasted good but a bit too smoked for my taste.

Genoa-style Seafood Salad

Linguine, Seafood Genovese

This was our lunch from their Cafe Portofino. Very cute little Italian eatery. You order in the cafeteria type line, pay and take a seat. They give you a little token with your food but I was surprised they knew where to find us to deliver the food. The token is not very obvious but I shouldn’t be surprised at how organized Tokyo Disney would be. It was a very good day, pricey (where in Disney isn’t it pricey?) but good. Next up, Tokyo Disneyland!

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Japan 2015 Day 3 – Disney Sea

Apr19

Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea were definitely planned before the trip was even booked! My friend is a Disney fanatic and a big fanatic for tsum tsums, both the game and the stuffed animals! One would expect Disneyland or DisneySea to have all that…it didn’t! That’s my warning to you! He found the tsum tsums he wanted from the Tokyo Skytree Mall Disney Store, they barely had tsum tsums at the theme park! Mainly cute accessories like phone cases and stuff, not the stuffed dolls! Can you believe it?

Anyway, I like visiting Disney theme parks but I don’t ride rides. It’s mainly because I get sick easily and I’m not looking to throw up all through the day. But I genuinely don’t mind waiting on the side as others ride rides…for me, the experience of walking through the park is enough! DisneySea is unique to Japan only so I was curious about what it had to offer! It’s very similar to their theme parks, it’s just an ocean theme and a lot of nice scenic water views. Japan Disney is on point on everything. I think if you went to Japan Disney and then went to the other parks, you’d be disappointed. The service, the cleanliness, the food, it’s all so amazing.

And the Japanese people…LOVE Disney! It’s very busy all the time! And Disney knows how to get their money. Hahaha the biggest thing I noticed about DisneySea was of course the popcorn and then the love of ice cream. Even with the cold weather, there was an ice cream kiosk everywhere I turned. I ate a lot this day…lol. But that’s the post for tomorrow.

Disney was planned for the beginning because our trip was about 10 days long and we had purchased a 7 day JR pass so we weren’t going to activate our pass until later on in the trip. We figured we would spend all day at Disney for two days so that would be smart to do them before the JR Passes were activated. It’s very easy to get to Disney, we jumped on the Yamanote Line and transferred to the Keiyo Line and headed to Maihama. Maihama is the stop for Disney. We didn’t know much so when we got to Disney, we purchased a Disney rail pass. It cost about $8 and would be good for two days. It’s a cute little rail that runs on a loop and takes you to the entrance of both Disney parks and their resort hotels. I think we realized too late that we could have easily walked to the parks from Maihama station but it’s okay. It was a cute experience and the rail has cute details! Let’s get to some pictures!

As I always say, the little details count!

Beautiful DisneySea, this is the view as you walk in.

Many groups of friends dressed in the same exact outfits. This was probably a line for picture taking with a Disney character. I also noticed kids enjoy wearing their school uniforms around the park.

I know these are like “fake” buildings built for Disney but I still felt like it was such a beautiful view. I don’t care how artificial it was, I felt transported! I was also excited to see their band give a performance. It was a great start!

They were very good! Every member was very animated and I loved how each person had their own solo. It was super cool. They played versions of famous Disney songs. I loved it!

Yup, I went to Italy.

There she blows! Nice detail!

I think this was part of the Indiana Jones exhibit

I got sucked into Disney. I bought a cell phone case and matching lariat from Disney fever. It was expensive but a nice souvenir.

One of the few rides I could handle. A gondola ride! It was very nice and we were at the front of our line so I got to sit in the good seats (in my opinion). These guys were pros but they also only spoke Japanese and also sang in Japanese? It was pretty cool. As they would pass the other gondolas, they had cute games or conversations ready to go between gondolas.

View from the gondola – beautiful right?

Behind my Italian restaurant in Italy. Hehe I wish, but that ends my DisneySea post for today! Stay tuned for food tomorrow!

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Hello!

Apr16

Mr. Ojisan Ramen says hi!

Funny picture yeah? This was a cup noodle I had in Japan. I bought a nishime pack from the grocery store to eat with it. Their nishime is awesome – it even came with the half egg. And you know how much I love Japan eggs. Had a bit too much lotus root and they were a bit hard for me but I ate em anyway. But yeah! I put some of the nishime into the cup noodle and this is how it floated to the top! Do you see the ojisan like I do? Green bean eyes, a brown little nose and a shiitake smile. I swear I didn’t do this on purpose!

Anyway, I apologize for the lag time between Japan posts. Life happened and things have been quite topsy turvy for me, emotionally and professionally. Nothing crazy so not to worry. I was expecting work to slow down by now but it’s actually picking up again even though the semester is coming to an end. I can’t wait for summer. So I hope you are all doing well! I know my little updates are usually made of complaints so I wanted to share a good story!!

We all know how awesome Costco is but last night was another example of why they are even more awesome! It also serves as another reason why I should always purchase my contact lenses from them! So I had my annual check-up and my doctor shared that my brand of contacts (Acuvue) changed their policies and made it so that everyone had to basically charge the same rate or higher…I assume to help doctors get orders from their clients versus going through 1-800-contacts or people like me, who order through Costco.

Anyway, my contacts used to have a $10 coupon every couple of months so I would always be able to order my contacts cheaper. I noticed Costco stopped offering the coupon so I figured it was related to this new rule. I was almost tempted to order from my doctor but she mentioned, maybe Costco would have it in stock right away so I held back. I went in last night and ordered my contacts. And yes! They had them in stock and yes! They process your insurance claim right away so I paid the amount after the insurance coverage. So the person ringing me up is doing all kinds of typing and printing, etc. I patiently wait because well, I sorta went in at 8:20 (they close at 8:30) and I felt pretty bad! Anyway, he finishes up my transaction and hands me a Costco Cash Card and tells me it’s for $25. So I’m like super confused right? And he tells me all about how Acuvue put that new rule into place but Costco has been trying to negotiate with them to keep doing the $10 coupons but haven’t come to an agreement yet…so Costco is voluntarily giving $25 gift cards until they can get it resolved. I mean, how’s that for service right? It’s something they totally do not have to do but they are doing it because they care about the customer. It was such an awesome experience that I just had to share it.

I hope you are all doing well. I’ll try to get some more Japan updates scheduled this weekend.

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Japan 2015 Day 2 – Food!

Apr8

A day of eating. Wait, let me change that. A trip of eating. Delish! No shame in my game, I had to make sure I ate it up during this trip. I sure did. Well, since we spent all day in Tokyo Solamachi, all our meals were from there too! Let’s get started shall we? First was our brunch meal in the Food Court. You order your food and get a buzzer that goes off when your food is ready to be picked up. Actually these were beepers/buzzers so the food court was abuzz with beeping the whole meal through. When you are done with your meal, you take it back to your establishment’s tray return window. Great system!

Kristian got a tonkatsu curry. He liked it a lot and let me have a taste. The curry had a nice mild flavor, I liked it! The Japanese are serious about their shredded cabbage. They love it there.

I got a Chinese set. It was a chicken and gravy over noodles dish that came with two siu mai and this mochi rice thing. The mochi rice thing was great, it was a mushroom sticky rice thing and it hardly stuck to the leaf/wrapper. The siu mai was okay, not great. Tastes like it looks, plain and bland. I was also a bit disappointed because I am pretty sure there was MSG in my food, I was thirsty all day! Not recommended. After a full day of shopping, we headed to the restaurant levels for dinner!

My salad! I love how they put in all these herbs in the butter and cheese. This was a good salad. The bread had some kind of pate on it so it was a bit hard to eat. I used my fork and knife.

French Onion Soup that came with my meal. Pretty good! It came in a mini Le Creuset pot, love it.

Kristian had two steak dishes during this trip that included an herb butter on top, I got super jelly for both! Looks awesome. Made me crave steak…gotta get my fill when I come home.

My dish! Omurice with Hamburg Steak WITH Foie Gras. You can hardly tell there is foie gras but it’s sitting there behind the hamburg steak! The burger was delicious and juicy as was the foie gras, the rice was alright. I’m not a huge fan of the rice but liked the egg.

As we walked through the mall, we walked through a bakery called Cheese Garden and they were sampling their Imperial Villa Cheese Cake, oh my god it was amazing. Somehow, the cheesecake is super rich and dense yet light at the same time. The cheesecake had an intense cream cheese taste. Kristian bought the cheesecake and we brought it back to the apartment, it took a few days to finish it but finish we did.

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Japan 2015 Day 2 – Tokyo Skytree

Apr7

Our first full day in Tokyo! We didn’t have much planned for this day. The two days after this would be all Disney all day. We also didn’t have our JR passes yet so it wasn’t a day for jumping in and out of the trains or subways. I woke up super early this morning because we slept early the night before knackered from the flight.

I woke up, took a shower, did a small load of laundry because I have a thing about the clothes I wear on airplanes. We decided to go to the Tokyo Skytree on the Asakusa subway line to Oshiage. Did we go up the actually Skytree? Nope. That costs money. Hahaha, so we checked out the SUPER AWESOME mall attached to the Skytree. The mall is called Tokyo Solamachi, perfect mall to start off with.

This is a quick shot of their food court. I will share the food from this meal tomorrow. I was just amazed by how clean their food court was. The Japanese are serious business in cleanliness. There was an attendant cleaning up after every person finished, they also had a great water station. You know what I noticed about cleaning attendants as well? They were always greeting people and welcoming them onto the floor, not avoiding contact like they do here you know?

A Studio Ghibli store! Very cute but I didn’t buy anything. I have enough Totoro stuff and it’s pricey!

I didn’t go up the Skytree but check out this cool shot I got from the patio area! I love it! And the patio area is great for kids. They had all sorts of physical games for kids to play…so lucky! Day 2 food post coming tomorrow!

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Japan 2015 – Day 1 Food

Apr5

We got a bit lost looking for our apartment initially but once we found it and dropped our bags, we laid around a bit playing with our devices since we had wifi. I really learned how much I depend on the internet through this trip. Forreal. Anyway, after a while we decided to head out and get ourselves some dinner. We were tired and weren’t in the mood to have confused conversations with restaurants. We finally ended up in a ramen restaurant. The waiter was very nice but didn’t know English. We figured we could point at things in the menu. Soon the waiter disappeared and he actually got help…his colleague spoke English! Really good English! That was super cool.

And guess what? I realized that we were eating at Santouka Ramen! Yes! The sister restaurant of our very own Hokkaido Ramen Santouka! I was really happy to realize that and noticed this restaurant had the same exactly bowls that we have in Hawaii. How nice and comforting that was. Our waiter told us a story about going to Seattle to teach people about Japanese culture but getting arrested at the airport and being sent back to Japan. That was quite the interesting story to hear, didn’t know how to follow that! I’ll just follow that with food.

Tan Tan version of their Ramen – of course I had to get it!

Very open kitchen. This whole restaurant is just a bar against the kitchen. I watched as the soup was boiling away on the side.

My friend’s ramen, yummm

Tan Tan Ramen! This was mine. It was delicious. I enjoyed it a lot. I thought the brown stuff on top was meat from the picture but it wasn’t. It was like preserved chinese cabbage, I like that though. Very good!

Free egg! We initially ordered gyoza but they had run out. The waiter was very nice and told us that to make up for it, my friend and I would get free egg! He talked it up. He didn’t have to, I know Japan eggs are awesome! Very nice gesture, very delicious gesture. This dinner was nice and warm for a cold night. It was a nice end for a crazy travel day. Day 2 coming soon!

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Japan 2015 – Day 1 Recap

Apr4

Ah yes. My spring trip to Japan! I’ve been to Japan once before in 2011 and it really helped this trip around. It was my friend’s first time to Japan so I was able to guide us around pretty good. I am now pro at the Yamanote Line. Sorta. I am going to journal out my trip here on my blog as tips for you guys and of course for me to document back to! I’ll try to give you folks specific details as much as I can.

First off, my plane tickets were a crazy good deal. I don’t know about you folks but I thought $645 was a great deal for a round trip ticket. I was watching the ticket prices every day and this one looks like it got added late so I got it for a good price and was able to pick some good seats! Yen was also awesome – I was able to get them for 121, it was much higher than like the 80 I got a few years back. This is a great time to buy yen!

Ready for take-off!

Chicken Dinner – small but good!

Small snack pack before we landed! It’s a ham egg salad sandwich. That was interesting.

We got our luggage and headed towards the train ticket kiosk. Our JR pass would not be validated until later in our trip so we took the Keisei Skyliner and transferred at Shinagawa Station to jump on the Yamanote Line to make our way to our apartment. The Keisei Skyliner ticket was pricey, about 2,500 yen.

Did Jenny say apartment?? Yes! We opted for an apartment rental over a hotel. We booked pretty late so the hotel options were slim. It was okay though because this apartment was great! Two beds, quiet and safe neighborhood, close to the subway and on the Yamanote Line! All great stuff! The bathroom was insanely small….the shower allowed us basically to stand up straight and in one direction. Hahaha…the biggest perk?

Pocket WiFi came with the apartment rental! We could carry this around everywhere we went! No getting lost with google maps (just super long winded walks…more to come on that later…) I booked my apartment from airbnb.com.

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maybeitsjenny

Hawaii based food blog with foodie travels!