Archive by Author | Jenny

Dowon Chinese Restaurant – Honolulu, HI

This past week has been a week of eating out. School is out and parking has been much better so I’m more inclined to venture off-campus to grab lunch. I’ve got quite a bit of posts coming up, I’ll slowly try to get them going. Still resting, work has not gotten much slower so I haven’t had a lot of time to rest. My plan this weekend is to clean, rest and eat (duh).

New restaurant alert! Dowon replaced the former Jong Ga Korean Restaurant and I was very excited to give them a try. Another Chinese (Korean style) restaurant with jajangmyun (black bean noodles) for me to try! There are two on the island that offer good options and I believe this is the third. As I walked in and dined there, the restaurant was filled with Koreans. That’s a good sign. So how was the food? Very good! The black bean noodle sauce they have here is much milder but I enjoyed it. Their black bean sauce is also more watery which I wasn’t a huge fan of, but if you want at thicker sauce, just get the other one – I want to say it’s called kanjangmyun but I probably butchered that. It’s just like jajangmyun but with a thicker/saltier sauce.

Let’s get to the pictures!

150524-01Yes, it’s a Korean style Chinese Restaurant. Usually it’s easy to tell these restaurants because they usually characterize their places as Northern Chinese Restaurants. But fear not, this is it!

150524-02The three normal sides dishes for jajangmyun. From top to bottom: sliced raw yellow onions with black bean paste, pickled daikon (takuan) and nicely soured kimchee. The raw onion with black bean paste is commonly served with the jajangmyun, I don’t get why people enjoy this. But I did eat it and of course I had raw onion breath all afternoon. It’s an interesting side dish.

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Tangsuyuk (Sweet and Sour Crispy Pork). You can get this with beef or pork, we decided to go traditional with the pork. This is the entree people usually order with black bean noodles. I think it’s a great entree to get because the noodles are in such a dark and rich sauce, the sweet and sour pork really help to cut into the richness of the meal. You never know what kind of pieces you will get with deep fried meat but this was wonderful. The sauce was definitely more sweet than sour and the pieces were crispy and light, the meat was tender and delicious! I would recommend this!

150524-08Jajangmyun! So delicious. Sorry I don’t have more pictures of this because I basically scarfed it down after this picture was taken. The noodles were cooked perfectly, the sauce was mild but not bland. I’m excited to give this place a try again, I’d like to try the jjamppong (spicy seafood noodle) next time too. They may want to rework their menu, the noodles are on page 1 and it’s only in Korean or Chinese. The rest of the menu has English with it. Also, when you order the jajangmyun – they will ask you if you want regular or seafood. I just go with regular because it’s cheaper and really…what difference will I taste under all this sauce? That’s just me.

Vons Chicken – Kalihi, HI

Hi folks. Yes, I survived this past week. It was a tough one. A funeral for my grandma, my final paper that was due Wednesday night (which I had a hard hard time writing – got it in an hour before it was due), a big division party I planned lead on. Needless to say, I’ve been resting a LOT. I would have taken vacation on Friday if I didn’t have something big to do at work. My brothers are leaving for China on Tuesday for over two months, gonna be tough. I love them as much as if they were my own so it’s going to be difficult without them around for so long. Summer opens up a few possibilities! I don’t plan on taking classes so I should have more time to do other things…like more recipes! I’ll try to get some more out for you folks. Give me a few more days before I get back into the full swing of blogging again. I hope you have been great.

Quick update today. Vons Chicken opened up in the Kalihi Palama Supermarket, they took over the old Tae’s spot right next to the Palama snackbar. I think Asians do chicken right so I definitely wanted to give them a try! I asked what their specialty was and they said that since it was my first time, I should try their Crispy Fried Chicken. Yes sir! They offer regular or hot, I asked for hot. He mentioned something about hot being just a sauce and I said okay, that’s fine! He mentioned it takes about 10 minutes, I think it’s more like 15 minutes so feel free to call ahead or put it in before walking around the store. It is $11.99 for a mini order and $20.99 for a full order. My mini order had 9 wings and drumettes altogether.

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150517-02So how was the chicken? It was a good choice! Very tasty, moist and crispy. A light crispy, not hard. He forgot to give me the hot sauce and I didn’t realize until I got home. A little pricey but I think it’s worth it it. I would definitely return to try another flavor!

Japan 2015 – Random Japan Purchases

Quick post to show off some cute stuff I bought from Japan. It’s mostly pictures of the things I got from Natural Kitchen that I wanted to show Jalna. And anyone who wants to be a fan of their stuff!

150507-01All from Natural Kitchen – I might be missing a few things but the bulk is here!

150507-02Okay I lied, it’s not all just 100 yen stuff. This one was 500! But if we compare it to the price here ($15 – $20), me paying less than 5 bucks was a steal! And this one has much cuter colors!

150507-03I was there for the cherry blossom season so they had a lot of sakura stuff! Here is a sakura foam pot rest thingie…so you don’t burn your table tops!

150507-04Sakura Coasters

150507-05Ah, here are the Laurel scents I was raving about. One drop of Savon and Cherry each into my aroma diffuser and I am in zen mode for the night. My alien looking aroma diffuser is in the background, hehe.

150507-06Jalna, you’re gonna get a laugh out of this one. I found these in the dollar store for a dollar each. They don’t sell this kine here, only get the primary color/alphabet kine for kids. I HAD TO GET IT. So I bought 24 of these. YES, 24 of these dang foot long squares. I carried it all around Odaiba back to the apartment and had to stuff them into my suitcase. Everything fit! And these of course offered mucho cushion in my suitcase. And yes, you can see that I initially placed them with the grain facing all crazy ways. I did fix it so they are more wood looking now. I’m nuts yeah? No regrets though!

I-NABA – Moilili, HI

Hey folks! Sorry, gotta take a short break from blogging about Japan. Especially since the next post is going to be the angry one! Gotta put myself in a zen place until I finish my paper! It’s been so busy at work that I haven’t been able to request vacation time to work on my paper. Luckily my supervisor is very nice in allowing me to take last minute vacation time when I find free time to do so (which right now is NONE). We had a nice lunch today for the office, we celebrated Administrative Professional’s Day in a nice little restaurant. Then a lot of things happened at work and I got mad. Hahaha wish I could elaborate more but I can’t.

For this post, I am sharing a recent lunch at I-NABA. You folks ever been there? It’s an old school soba place on South King Street, they share the same lot as Baskin Robbins and Manabu’s. Great place and I heard they make their own soba noodles so they are great! If you like soba, you won’t regret it! Here are some pictures!

150505-01My friend got soba with natto. She loved it! She got it with the hot broth, you can choose hot or cold.

150505-02I got the special Mentaiko on grated yamaimo served with bonito in a cold broth. It was delicious. My other friend called yamaimo snot before I went out for lunch which was not pleasant as I ate it and remembered that. Hehe, I get what she meant though.

150505-03Here is the edamame rice that comes with the set. It tasted okay, a bit bland.

150505-04Small Order of Tempura. This was delicious! The batter is light and they fried it fresh so it tasted perfectly crispy. I loved it.

McDonald’s Seasoned Fries

Hi folks! Quick update for a late Sunday night. I’ve had quite a day. I headed to work to work on my paper. It was a lot of resting as opposed to writing but I feel a little bit better about the paper. I worked on my outline a bit so I have more of a direction of what to write. I really think this paper is going to come down to the wire and that’s terrible. Anyway, instead of flash drives, I send myself a copy of my paper on e-mail so I can’t lose it. Guess what I ended up doing? It was a nightmare come true, I sent the e-mail to a mailing list rather than to myself. I don’t even know how that happened! The e-mail address is nowhere near how my e-mail is spelled and it wasn’t like I was rushing to get this done. Sheesh. Luckily the mailing list is very small and I was notified by one of them tonight that I had done it. I immediately wrote back to everyone and apologized and asked them to delete it. There’s nothing bad in my e-mail or draft, just bad that I sent it to them!

Anyway, tonight I started prepping food for this week’s lunches. I was ENTIRELY too ambitious. I got a bag of that fake meat to hydrate and I wanted to try my hand at seasoning it with kalbi sauce to create a bibimbap. Well bibimbap includes a LOT of vegetables. I spent so much time slicing up vegetables and seasoning them to cook, it was crazy.

The meat came out okay but I think it got seasoned TOO much. I also wanted to make kimchee gyoza. I seriously am nuts. I made those by hand and cooked them too. I think the cooking and prep took about 3-4 hours tonight. I am tired. I give Korean people a lot of credit for their dishes, nothing but respect. So how am I going to leave this post? McDonald’s French Fries. Those things are already so good but I heard they had this shake and season thing right now so I had to try it!

150503-01It comes with it’s very own “shake” bag with the seasoning you choose inside. It’s very easy to do and the seasoning packets really latch onto the fries!

150503-02Here are the two seasonings we have in Hawaii. My favorite? I like the garlic parmesan over the zesty ranch. I definitely would like to get it again before it goes away! It’s for a limited time only. I think I heard Japan has a nori flavor. Of course they do, we need that here! Anyway, the seasoning comes free with an order of medium or large fries…or of course with the value meals. When I ordered it, I asked for the seasoning specifically. They don’t come automatically with the fries so make sure you ask!

150503-03Garlic Parmesan

150503-04Zesty Ranch

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…

150422-18Sakura 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!

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150423-02Seasoned Bean Sprouts

150423-03Pickled Ginger

150423-04Pickled Mustard Plant

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150423-06The classic ramen

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150423-08I 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!

Japan 2015 Day 4 – Food!

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!

150422-01Breakfast. 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.

150422-02Ratatouille Hot Dog Set, this was like almost $10. Dorothy, we’re not at Costco anymore…

150422-03So 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.

150422-05Just 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.

150422-06The alien mochi balls! They were SO good. Very very very soft mochi skin filled with different flavor creams.

150422-07Strawberry (the best one)

150422-08Vanilla/Custard – good!

150422-09Chocolate! 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.

150422-10How cute is this plate! Round 1. The variety isn’t that great but the food was good enough.

150422-11So 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.

150422-12I got creative and got the soup bowl to make a curry and rice bowl. Easier to eat this way.

150422-13Round 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.

150422-14Oh Jesus. Round Three! I needed to get this to get a picture of the carrot.

150422-15I got my Mickey face!

150422-16Dessert was fresh fruit and jelly. Knowing the price for fresh fruit in Japan – this was a treat!

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150422-17I 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!

Japan 2015 Day 4 – Disneyland

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.

150421-01Time to head into the happiest place on earth! Wait, does that apply to all Disney sites??

150421-02I 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.

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150421-05New Orleans! Cute stuff. Wish I could go up there and take pictures…hehe

150421-06Another 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.

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150421-08My 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!

150421-09Sorry, so many pictures of flowers. I didn’t take much pictures of the park!

150421-10I 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.

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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!

Japan 2015 Day 3 – Food!

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…

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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!

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150420-03Sausage 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.

150420-04I was too curious about this one! Sea Salt Ice Cream!

150420-05It 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!

150420-07Churro – 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.

150420-06Famous 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.

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Genoa-style Seafood Salad

150420-09Linguine, 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!

Japan 2015 Day 3 – Disney Sea

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!

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150419-02As I always say, the little details count!

150419-03Beautiful DisneySea, this is the view as you walk in.

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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.

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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!

150419-07They 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!

150419-08Yup, I went to Italy.

150419-09There she blows! Nice detail!

150419-10I think this was part of the Indiana Jones exhibit

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150419-12I got sucked into Disney. I bought a cell phone case and matching lariat from Disney fever. It was expensive but a nice souvenir.

150419-13One 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.

150419-14View from the gondola – beautiful right?

150419-15Behind my Italian restaurant in Italy. Hehe I wish, but that ends my DisneySea post for today! Stay tuned for food tomorrow!