Nanzan – Kyoto, Japan

I can’t even link this restaurant, I don’t think I can find it. This restaurant was located at Kyoto Station. We decided to take a day trip from Osaka and were starving by the time we arrived at Kyoto. Craving meat, we decided to try this place. The ramen place had a line but this place was empty. Maybe that was a sign. Vicki and I had a funny exchange over this, she thought this restaurant was related to Nanzan GiroGiro in Hawaii, unfortunately it is not! Although I really want to try Nanzan GiroGiro…

Beef Steak Lunch (A) | ¥2700
daily beef steak cuts like Kyoto Wagyu and Japanese beef. 
Beef steak 100g, cattle bone broth soup, salad, rice set.
Beef Steak Lunch (B) | ¥3850
today’s special beef steak cuts like Kyoto wagyu and Japanese beef loin.
Today’s special beef steak 100g, cattle bone broth soup, salad, rice set.
Rice, Cattle Bone Broth Soup, Tsukemono/Kimchee

The bone broth was very clean and light tasting. The tsukemono was a nice touch since I wasn’t expecting it. Yes, that is one kimchee wonbok leaf folded up (lol). It was good, quality over quantity right.

Salad!

Here is the salad that came with the set. It tasted good, isn’t it so pretty? Yes to plentiful onions yet again. I enjoyed this!

In the end, was this worth the money? Ehh…initially I thought it was kind of pricey. But I guess for a set, this was a pretty good deal! We got both sets and shared, I think I would get Set B on my own if I were to come here again.

Universal Studios – Osaka, Japan

Ever read a blog about Universal Studios and only want to read about the food? Yeah, me too. You mean there are other things to do at these parks but eat? You stumped me. Anyway, I’m serious…this is nothing but food. Enjoy!

Smoked Turkey Leg

Actually, this one I picked up was a chicken leg. I think? It certainly was not as big as the turkey legs I have gotten. Even the sign read chicken leg, too bad I didn’t take a picture of it. Shucks!

Edit: Okay I must have had too much legs this trip, this one WAS a turkey leg. It was Disney that was a chicken leg. I’m sure you’re excited for that upcoming post, lol.

Hot Butter Beer

Thinking I should have gotten the cold slushie one. It was so cold that I decided to get the hot one, it was nice and warm in my hands. It was quite nice actually! Had myself a nice little seat while I slowly sipped this sweet elixir.

Happiness Cafe – Keema Curry

We know these parks have expensive meals right? And the food can be somewhat mediocre. I enjoyed this dish but was a bit disappointed that it didn’t include a cuteness factor like the next dish I am going to share. I do like the salads they serve in Japan, plenty onions and an onion dressing, haha.

Fried Chicken Plate

How cute is this? This wasn’t my dish but it was enjoyed! Gotta appeal to the kids right? Though the diner of this dish was not a kid…we’re all kids at heart.

A bit of a language barrier ended up a mistake here. We kept asking the cashier what the flavor of this dessert was. The menu just called it cream but it is like neon yellow. Ordered it anyway and it was banana flavored. Wait, artificial banana flavor. Gross. Fresh banana, I get. This was…really bad. Not recommended and it costs extra!

Hello Kitty Donuts and Nikuman

Yes, afternoon snack. Look at the cuteness! And yes, it tasted good too! I enjoyed the hot nikuman, perfect for the chilly weather. The donut holes were good, filled with custard or an apple filling. The donuts were definitely more of a treat for the eyes than the tummy. Perfect photo op!

Hakata Ikkousha – Osaka, Japan

Ah yes, the Japan posts start…now! First stop? About 5 days in Osaka. I love Osaka. I love Osaka more than Tokyo. The flight to Japan is always longer than the one back home and I didn’t get much sleep on this flight. Then, we had to navigate our way to the train to take us into the the city center of Osaka. The train ride was fine, we got good seats but it was like another nearly 2 hours to get there!

Luckily for us, our hotel in Osaka runs a shuttle bus from Osaka Station to the hotel. We were able to find the Shuttle bus stop okay, actually a few hotels run shuttle buses so that was convenient! What I found amusing was that our bus ran constantly and was full of both hotel and non-hotel patrons, jump on and you get a free ride to the hotel or to Osaka Station. Our hotel was not located in a lively area so the bus was nice to take to Osaka Station to begin our daily journeys.

Anyway, we got to the hotel and checked in. Threw down our bags and then were hungry. We decided to take the hotel bus back to Osaka Station, ha! Hakata Ikkousha is located right in front of our bus stop, we did not want to go searching for another place at this point. We were sold.

The ticket machine to order! There was a bit of instructions but we still managed to muck it up. I didn’t realize you had to put your money in first and then order…so we ordered an extra bowl of ramen by accident. Luckily one of the workers came out and clarified everything and refunded us! Whew!

Red Ajitama Ramen
I don’t remember the name of this

This was my ramen, I saw black oil in the picture of the vending machine and went for it. Figured it was black garlic oil. Was it? I don’t even remember so I can’t tell you. How was the ramen? Good, not great. Hit the spot after long hours of travel.

Gotta always get a shot of the egg. How does this look to you? To me, I prefer the yolk to be softer and creamier so this was a bit overcooked for my taste.

Mentaiko Rice

Hmm, this was okay. Pretty salty but what do you expect with mentaiko??

Gyoza

Gyoza was good. I always love gyoza and the did it just fine! Was I itching to return back to this restaurant? Not really, no repeat visits this trip. We had plenty of repeat trips to Ichiran (let’s not go there, unless I post about it).

Daiki Suisan Dotonbori – Osaka, Japan

I spent an entire day in Dotonbori. It was a lot. It was a lot of shopping and a lot of eating. And it’s hard because you want to try everything before you leave. What was Daiki Suisan Dotonbori? This was technically lunch but it was eaten VERY VERY close to dinner, but I tried my very best to eat to my full happiness at both meals. But if I had a choice? I would totally come back to this place to eat more next time! Good quality sushi for crazy low prices? Gosh, I could grind all day. I don’t have any prices for you folks…just pictures this time.

I don’t care if my mouth was going to swell up 10 times it’s size, I had to eat this. This was like $1 USD, seriously. I should have gotten more!

This is like a double crab sushi. Crab miso with crab meat. Looks appetizing right? Okay, no it doesn’t. It didn’t taste that great either. I wouldn’t recommend this one.

I’m a sucker for tuna mayo sushi. A little too heavy handed on the mayo, and it’s the same price as the raw shrimp?? What was I thinking getting this??

Had a craving for unagi which is odd since I never do…but it was good! I’m glad I got it.

I’m not even a huge fan of uni but I just had to get it because it was so cheap. Oh, and for the picture! It was actually pretty good…

Look, if you know me, this choice should be of no surprise. Ya, I got a hamburger sushi okay. Hahaha, I was just curious how it would taste…I know this is for kids. And guess what? Was good! And yes, once again, same price as the raw shrimp! I still have no regrets!

Just gonna end the post with two pictures of Dotonbori…here is the famous Glico sign. It’s too bad it wasn’t lit up…

Dotonbori at night! I was so baus tired by this time…if you look to the left, you’ll see the big Don Quijote Ferris Wheel. This Don Quijote is made for omiyage, I got choke snacks from there to bring home.

Mixed Plate – Osaka Edition

Happy Aloha Friday! Just wanted to do a post with some random pictures I wouldn’t be able to create full posts out of…from Osaka! Enjoy!

Okay, I have to admit…Coca Cola Peach was the drink I really really wanted to try in Japan. I read that it was a limited edition and prayed it would still be there when I took my trip. I actually ran into the 711 as we walked to the apartment and found it. Hallelujah. After a very long travel, I just wanted for throw down and take a big drink of this drink. Ummm…well, I didn’t like it. To me, it tastes nothing like peach….or if it tasted like peach, it tasted very artificial, almost flowery. I did not like it and would not get this again.

Check this out! I had to get a quick pic of this as we walked around…they have Aloha Maid! 80 cents a can, special discount. Haha! Is how our cans read too? Passion & Orange? I always thought it was just passion orange.

OKAY, HERE IS MY FAVORITE DRINK. Sorry for the yelling, but I really enjoyed this drink. It was delicious and refreshing. Okay, you see the word vitamin on the bottle but let’s be real, this drink ain’t healthy in any way and I no care. I even snuck a few bottles home…and regret not sneaking more. Okay, maybe I just need to buy some coke here and add my own lemon. So good…

For two days, I bought food from 711 the night before to have for breakfast. I had a hard time adjusting to Japan time so I usually woke up before 5am and got hungry. Here is one of the musubi packs, salmon and mayo tuna. Oh my, so good. The quality of the ingredients is just so great. You know how the musubis are here? We put it in the fridge and then it’s rock hard. Well these musubis stay ono and soft. 711 in Japan is awesome.

Last dish to share…I love soba so this was one of my meals. I love that they give you a little packet of water to add to the noodles so they don’t stay stuck together. Man…wish our 711 would step up their game. And they sold these two dashi eggs on the side, yup I ate both and yup both were perfectly cooked and seasoned. Orange runny yolk for the win. Have a great weekend guys.

Ikinari Steak – Osaka, Japan

As I mentioned in a previous post, our last day in Osaka was located around the main Osaka Station. After some shopping, we had a hankering for some good lunch. I had a hankering for steak, lo and behold…Ikinari Steak! This was a quick find, there was a line of Japanese natives outside the shop, this should be good no? The prices were reasonable and they were busy, LET’S DO THIS.

Coca Cola • ¥300 (yikes!)

Wild Steak (300 g) • ¥1,390

Lunch Set A (Rice and Salad) • ¥300

Being non-Japanese speakers, it was a little bit confusing to order at this restaurant. The waitress was very nice and gave us English menus and proceeded to help us with the ordering. It’s a bit confusing because you have to walk up to the grill master to ask him to cook up your meat. Well, he didn’t really know English so we couldn’t quite get across that we wanted medium rare. Well the steak still came out pretty nicely cooked, though the hot plate kept cooking the steak past my temperature liking. For about $14, the serving of steak was a decent portion but I didn’t think it was anything special. In fact, I think I enjoyed the salad the most (is this becoming a theme?). I liked that they have all the salad dressings and steak sauces at your table for you to use. Aside from the costly soda, this lunch was good and cheap! I would recommend it if you’re feeling up to some steak!

Universal Studios – Osaka, Japan

What trip to Osaka would be complete without a visit to Universal Studios? This is my first ever visit to any Universal Studios and boy was I excited! I already know Disney in Tokyo is awesome, I’m afraid I may have visited the best Universal Studios before I even got to see the rest! Although, I’m told the Florida location has much more to see and do so I’ll save my judgement for a later time.

Why was I so excited to go to Universal? HARRY POTTER WORLD OF COURSE. We had planned to get to Universal right when they opened, it didn’t work out in our favor…we got there maybe 15 minutes after they opened. Was there a ton of people already there? Yes. We bought our tickets from Klook, have you heard of Klook? It’s a phone app that you can purchase tickets, food certificates, etc. from! I used it in both Hong Kong and Osaka, and it works great! I connected my Klook to my paypal account so I can purchase things in Osaka through the app and not get charged any foreign transaction fees and second, not have to use my valuable yen. Usually Klook offers a bit of a discount off tickets, in this case, the Universal tickets were about the same price as you would get at the door…but it was nice to walk right past the ticket lines and scan my phone at the entrance.

For those who know me, you know I get motion sickness. Hardcore. So why did I stand in a three hour line to ride the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey? You got me, I don’t know why but I did it. Decided if I was going to ride a ride, might as well ride a crazy one and see if I die. I didn’t die. I didn’t throw up! Well, it is a crazy ride that is crazy fast and flips you all ways…I thought in the beginning that if I close my eyes, maybe I wouldn’t get sick. Nope, closing my eyes made me dizzy so I kept my eyes wide open the entire time. And well some images of the snake and deatheaters aren’t so pleasant but I’m sure my riding companions wouldn’t have appreciated projectile vomiting either. Hahaha, I think as I stood in line, I saw at least three signs saying if you have motion sickness, get out. I’m glad I rode it to say I rode it, I will not be riding it again.

Rotisserie Chicken and Pork Ribs Platter • ¥1950

Rotisserie Smoked Chicken Platter • ¥1900

Originally, I got the Chicken and Ribs plate but when we sat down, I suddenly didn’t feel like the ribs and switched. The plate is pretty good! Well it’s $20, so it better be good! The chicken was nicely cooked and the corn was delicious and sweet. The drink of course is not included in the meal, it costs extra. I want to say it was about $3.00, theme park prices. There were a ton of birds in the area. When I finished my food, two birds climbed onto my plate and started to pick at my food. Was pretty unreal. I missed the actual sight but a crow flew in and grabbed a chicken from one of the other tables! I think it was a leftover plate of food, not from a dining customer. Whew. I can’t get over how cheerful and nice the workers are at these Japanese theme parks. The lady who was cleaning up all the finished plates of food was incredibly gracious and patient, wish we had some of that service here!

Isn’t this a great shot? I have to give credit to my cousin, she spotted that it would be a great shot with the reflection in the water and boy was she right. If you want to get this shot, you will have to dine at Three Brooms because this was from their outdoor dining area.

Finally, I had to get that churro shot with Hogwarts in the background. Thank you to my hand model. Universal Studios offers churros, turkey legs, cute treats…very similar to Disney! There is also a Coca Cola truck that allows you to customize Coke bottles! What a nifty souvenir! My cousin got one and the worker kept stating that the word on the bottle you customize must be the name on your passport. He kept asking to confirm that it was her name on her passport. She said yes, he doesn’t check, he just expects the answer to be yes. I’m assuming they are trying to curb any bad words being placed on the bottles…but as an FYI, they do not check your passports!

Yamauchi Farm – Osaka, Japan

For me, I have never had a bad meal in Japan. Even the cheapest restaurants offer quality food. While I love trying new restaurants, sometimes, since you are out all day, you just wanna get back to your hotel/apartment and eat something quick nearby. Luckily for us, Yamauchi Farm is a 5 minute walk to our apartment. We had just finished a full day at Universal, post to come soon, and we were famished and exhausted. What a great place to walk into, this restaurant has everything! Check out their menu, it is fully loaded! The servers weren’t great at English but they didn’t need to be, the menu had English in it and…they had an iPad for ordering! Yessss!

Yamauchi Farm Menu

So this was the starter served…uhhh?! The cabbage and daikon strips are not pickled in any way. It was served with this sauce…

This tasted like a miso paste with pickled vegetables. I didn’t quite know what to do so I just took some out and dipped the daikon in it because I was so hungry. Then I started wondering, was I supposed to lather this sauce on the veggies to ferment them quickly? Gosh I have no idea. I didn’t do it and the cabbage was totally wasted…

Passion Fruit Mojito • ¥480

You know I have a passion fruit drink and mojito weakness. The drink was good. And when I say good, it means I tasted no alcohol and it was just like juice. I’m so junk at drinking yeah?

Soft-boiled Eggs with Spicy Cod Roe • ¥350

Yummy, I will eat Japanese eggs all day everyday. While this dish was good, it was sooo salty. Definitely needed rice…

Freshly Shipped Sashimi Assortment • ¥1,380

This wasn’t my dish but most of the fish pieces were saba I believe. Lucky for me, my partner does not like saba so it was all mine.

Kyushu Kara-age Style Deep-fried Small Shrimp • ¥480

Collagen Loaded Salt-based Ramen with Free Range Chicken • ¥750

I needed some comfort food this night and this menu item drew me in! Not a big serving but for the price, it was great. I shared this with my dining partner, not sure how much collagen is really loaded in this baby but it tasted good.

[Kagoshima] Spicy Spring Bonito Yukhoe Donburi Rice Bowl • ¥580

Yup, I got this dish too. I was very curious about how this dish would taste. Yukhoe, I associate that phrase with the Korean raw beef tartar dish so I wasn’t sure what to expect. This restaurant serves raw chicken and raw horse I think?! So I was almost afraid of what I would get served. Well, I think it was actually the bonito fish…thought it was ahi. I don’t think I have had fresh bonito before, just the dried shavings on top of takoyaki. I really enjoyed this donburi – the orange yolk to mix in? Hey, I’m so there.

We were too tired to fully enjoy this restaurant experience and I kind of regret not being able to go back. There were some businessmen in there drinking and eating it up. Come to think of it, there were some really good restaurants right next to our apartment. We rented an Airbnb for this trip, I thought it was a great idea and the price is way cheaper than a hotel. Do you folks Airbnb when you travel? Anyway, this restaurant seems to be a chain so if you can find it when you are in Japan – give them a try!

 

Zuboraya Dotonbori – Osaka, Japan

I am back from Japan! It was four full days – and when I say full, I mean full. Sometimes vacations can be tougher than work, my feet are still recovering! So for our first day in Osaka, we decided to risk our lives, haha. We both have not tried fugu before and this was the day to try it. Yes, fugu contains tetrodotoxin and can cause asphyxiation…no big deal right? Okay, it’s somewhat of a big deal. But we found a popular restaurant, Zuboraya, and I knew we would be in good hands.

Fugu Sushi Combination • ¥1,300

Benntenn Course • ¥5,400

Two kinds of seasonal appetizer, raw puffer fish sashimi, puffer fish hot pot, puffer fish deep fried, zosui (rice added to the hot pot broth at the end, they also add raw egg!), seasonal fruit.

These are the two seasonal appetizers. They were interesting…the blue dish tasted like a crunchy part of the fish. Perhaps some type of cartilage or skin? The green sauce was sweet, almost tasted like a dessert. The yellow dish has a tofu-like dish that tasted a bit like coconut milk. Probably our least favorite part of the meal…

Fugu sashimi! Interesting texture, a bit chewy. The taste? Not much really, they serve it with a yuzu ponzu dipping sauce and the yuzu taste is quite strong.

Deep fried fugu, it comes with about four pieces of fugu (not boneless, so be careful), fried potatoes, shishito pepper and red bell pepper. The fish nuggets were delicious!

Here are the contents of the fugu hot pot, sorry I didn’t get a shot of it cooking! It didn’t look too impressive anyway…tasted good!

Raw egg, rice, and toppings ready for some zosui action!

The waitress cooks it for you – this was delicious! It was actually one of my favorite parts of the meal, it’s a shame it’s in the end because we were already full so we couldn’t finish it!

Seasonal fruit to finish off the meal, Japanese strawberries? Yes please!! They were so nice and sweet, perfect way to end the meal. I liked that this restaurant also gave you iced water to start automatically, they must cater to foreign visitors. And let me tell you, Osaka was FULL of foreign visitors.

 

Japan 2015 Day 5 – Shibuya

The day has come. I am going to share my Shibuya experience now. This day felt like the culmination of all the bad things waiting to happen. First, I think we were both tired from the back to back Disney trips which included all day walking so we weren’t ready for this day. Well, at least I wasn’t ready. I also wore the wrong shoes which made for an even worse shopping trip, my feet hurt from early in the day which put me in a bad mood. No separate food post, all in one post – I apologize ahead of time for all the pics all at once.

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Breakfast was from a cute little bakery.

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150525-03I had a Pesto Shrimp with Cheese Toast with a cup of Iced Coffee. I like Japan’s iced coffee, they serve it with liquid sugar and cream, we should have more liquid sugar here to use.

After breakfast, we did some dollar shopping at Daiso and CanDo. You know me and dollar stores, now I had bags of stuff to lug around from the morning. Then we decided to grab some lunch and found a Genki Sushi. I just had to see what the Japan version had to offer! No regrets here. Very efficient service and everyone single seat has their own ordering screen. Their menu is way cheaper than ours (no spicy tuna, sorry guys) and very clean!

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150525-164 Different Preparations of Squid – delicious!

150525-17Uni – not good.

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150525-19Of course I always order the weird thing at each restaurant. They had a cheeseburger nigiri…lol. I mean the burger patty doesn’t even fit on the rice. It was delicious!

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150525-05Famous Hachiko Statue. I wish this statue was situated in a better place. I get that it needs to be near the subway station he used to wait at but I wish it wasn’t placed in the smoking area. Just doesn’t do him justice, you know? Get plenty people trying to take pictures…and plenty of smokers. I think you can imagine the chaos.

150525-06Don Quijote in Japan. Hahaha very crowded and very narrow aisles.

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150525-08Are these not the cutest?? They were selling these at Loft and I was SO tempted to buy one. But I knew I would never be able to put this together myself so I decided to save my money. I would buy this ready-made, for sure.

So here comes the worst part of the day. We had to grab dinner and I looked up various places on Yelp and decided on Ton-Chang. It took a while to find them because they are hidden in a big building upstairs but we finally did! We walked up the stairs and was greeted by a host in front behind this little counter. I asked if they had an English menu. They did. We got seated and there were only two ladies dining in the entire restaurant. They kept talking to us saying something but we didn’t quite get it, we finally understood that the chairs were barrels that opened up for our bags. Nifty.

So we sit down and start looking through the menu and they start setting up all the sides and the grill. We decide to order a pork set to share. Oh by the way, this is one of those Korean BBQ joints. As we’re waiting, I hear the wait staff talking to one another in Korean. So…the staff are all Korean people. She comes over and bends down in front of me and takes our order, speaking only in Japanese. Okay fine, we point to the set and figure that’s it. She then asks us a question which we both don’t understand. We both say we don’t understand and this girl doesn’t even try to help us understand. As a person who worked in customer service, I would always attempt to help a customer understand. She could have easily pointed to something in the ENGLISH menu to help us understand but she just kneeled there, staring at us. Her face was emotionless but rude, it’s so hard to explain. Finally she excuses herself and decides to help the other table to cook.

It’s funny because the things she says to us in Japanese are definitely in the polite format but with the rudest and coldest tone. As she’s helping the other table, I watched as a girl comes into the restaurant and returns something to the manager behind the counter (previously mentioned him as a host) and well, he’s Korean too because brada starts yelling AND swearing at her in Korean. Seriously. I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. The girl looks taken aback by it but I think she might have been a worker, who knows. It was all so uncomfortable. Then the waitress comes back to our table and kneels down again and asks the same dang question again. Kneels there and stares at us as we say we don’t understand. I ask if anyone knows English. She makes an X with her arms and says no. What were our options then? I was STEAMING mad. I just felt like all her actions were so deliberate and since she refused to help us, we just left. She was completely fine with that. She turned off the stove and grabbed the food to put back (which I can only assume they would serve again). I don’t think I have ever wanted to slap someone as much as I did with her. If you sat there and experienced her purposefully rude behavior, you would never want to go there. The fact that they have an English version of their menu shows that they should have been able to service us. What is the point otherwise? God, that was the single most terrible restaurant experience I have ever had. So glad to write this one last time and get it over with. I did end up writing an e-mail to their company, no response, of course. So I would highly recommend NOT going there. Here’s the dinner I ended up with after a long terrible day.

150525-20Yes, cup noodle. Curry cup noodles and it was delicious. Even Japan’s cup noodle is premium, the cheese and meat look and taste fresh – not obviously dehydrated. Day 6 is coming up! Started up kind of junk but definitely brightened up afterwards! Have a good one folks.