Chan and I took the shinkansen (thank you Rail Pass) from Osaka to Kyoto which was a breezy 15 minute ride. We met up with his friends Mai and Tomomi. Kiharu (NOT KIHARU Brasserie – also located in Kyoto) is Mai’s favorite restaurant, so much so that she makes the journey from Tokyo to Kyoto just to eat here. And when she’s in Kyoto, she’ll eat at this restaurant like 3 nights in a row. She loves it that much! Quite a tall order but my gosh, what a wonderful experience. Yet another restaurant we would never have found on our own, very small restaurant run by the master chef and him alone. It’s all by reservation so no walk-ins, you sit at the bar and he serves you dish by dish. It’s all omakase, you do no ordering, it’s based on his shopping finds that morning. If you’re a drinker, he serves up nice sake pairings with each course.

The master chef was so wonderful and happy, even though us tourists couldn’t communicate with him, he was excited and tried his best! He was also overjoyed to hear we were from Hawaii lol. This was an experience like no other! Highly recommend if you are able to make you reservations and can speak Japanese lol.

Green Pea Soup, Tofu wrapped in Fried Mochi Bits with Yuzu Miso

What an interesting soup, great starter. Awesome flavors, super fresh ingredients. The taste of fresh peas? Can’t be beat!

Green Salad with Fried Yuba and Goma Dressing

Simple enough dish but the fried yuba is so good. Light and crispy, loved this salad anad the different textures!

Buri and Hirame Sashimi

Can’t go wrong with fresh locally caugh fish. Delicious!!!

Big Daikon Oden with Aburage and Yuzu Zest

Simple dish right? But aren’t simple dishes the best? He visually showed us with his hands how big the daikon was that used to make the oden. I believe him. Perfect melding of flavors.

Roasted Onion with Homemade Salt and Fried Soba Miso Dip

Okay, not all dishes can be winners. This dish wasn’t bad but it wasn’t my favorite. He roasted the onion over his grill and…it’s not like the onion takes in the smoky flavor you know? He deep fries buckwheat and mixes it into the miso. It was okay.

Salmon with Giant Shishito Pepper and Garlic Sauce

Salmon? Check. Giant Shishito Pepper? Check. Garlic Sauce? Check. I’m just ticking off all the things I liked in this dish. Yum!

Fried Taro with Fried Pickled Sakura Leaf

Another winner dish! Taking a bite out of the taro and then a bite out of the sakura leaf, the balance or the dense starch with the sourness of the leaf? Delicious! I enjoyed it quite a bit!

Matsutake Mushroom Rice with Carrots and a Chicken Base

Closing dish of the night, to me, just simple home cooked style dish. Comforting on a cold night. Look at how brightly colored the carrots are! It was delicious. Thank you again to Mai and Tomomi for a wonderful dinner and the wonderful company!

Thanks to Chan’s friends, we got to try another awesome Japanese restaurant we probably would never have found ourselves. Nanpeidai Goryo–san is located in Shibuya in a residential building. They specialize in vegetable and meat rolls on skewers that are grilled. Not tourist friendly, thankfully Chan’s friends did all the ordering!

This is pretty cool, the server brings this platter out to every table to show you what the different items are. I assume they don’t use this for actual cooking because I saw a waiter sneeze on it lol. I can probably read most of these signs but it would just take 10 years for me to read and then translate it in my head.

Kampachi | ¥880

I’ll try my best to find the prices and names of these dishes. This was a seasoned kampachi sashimi dish. Very good!

Red Sangria | ¥600

I actually drank alcohol, can you believe it? I did not feel good after drinking this. It got to me a bit so it just further cements that I shouldn’t drink. I mean, isn’t this basically a juice? LOL

Seasoned Cabbage

If you know, you know. When you go to these yakiniku places, they serve up some seasoned cabbage as a free service. It’s very lightly seasoned with probably sesame oil and salt?

Assorted Meat Vegetable Rolls

Okay good luck folks, I don’t know what these were. They were all good though!

Shirako

You folks know what this is right? If not, sorry about this. This is fish sperm. I have never had it before but I think this is from cod? I don’t know. Well how was it? Not looking for a that’s what she said moment but man this tasted good. It was super clean tasting. I enjoyed it a lot. I tried this again in another restaurant that maybe wasn’t as high end and did not like it there. It was good here!

Deep Fried Yamaimo | ¥580

Very good! Surprisingly light and not that gooey haha

I forget what this was. Was good though, how can anything served in that much butter/oil not be good?

More meat sticks in my mouth! That’s what she said.

Heh. I don’t remember what this was either lol.

Iburigakko with Cream Cheese | ¥500

My freaking favorite dish of the night. It’s smoked daikon rolled with cream cheese and I just didn’t even know what it was when it was served so I thought it was some kind of char siu (lol). Do we have iburigakko here in Hawaii? Does Don Q import it? I need to eat it again!!!!

When I was growing up, KIKU was my daily jam – especially on Saturdays (yes, quite a lively social calendar) but I loved it because Soko Ga Shiritai would show at like 6PM and then right after that show ended, Crayon Shinchan would come on. Then I would get a half hour break to shower before I watched my 8PM Korean drama on KBFD (lol). It’s a core memory for me.

Anyway, my favorite episodes on Soko Ga Shiritai were always their restaurant segments, especially the 1000-yen meals. One restaurant always remained in my memory, Kitchen Carrot. I wish I could find the episode again but it was a small restaurant run by a married couple, the husband was a former butcher so he knew how to get good quality meat at a cheap price which is why they were able to offer cheaper meal sets. They were super popular back then and I remember how tired the wife was (she said it and looked it) but the food…oh the food looked so good. It’s always been on my bucket list to find this restaurant and try it and guess what? I did on this trip! And a double score? We met up with Kat for lunch here! Thank you Kat for making the trek out here to join us for lunch! And oh my gosh, THANK YOU FOR THE OMIYAGE. You really didn’t have to and I loved the bag you gave me and all the goodies inside, I can’t wait to try the Japanese sriracha, you are so generous. And thank god Kat was there because they are not English friendly at this restaurant lol – double thank you!

Small kine research was that the original owners sold this place about a decade back – luckily the new owners are running it pretty much the same!

Looks just like it did in the 90’s! And man, this restaurant is SMALL. We were the first ones in line, well, no line really. But there was a stream of people coming in as we started eating.

Sirloin Steak (200g) | ¥1,750
served with miso soup, rice and coffee/oolong tea or orange juice

This was Kat’s dish! Oh man, it looked so good. I wanted to get hers when I saw it arrive! I’m a sucker for herbed butter, looked like the perfect portion too!

Sutemori Chicken (Hamburg, Chili Pepper Steak, Chicken Saute, Cream Croquette) | ¥1,850

Chan and I ordered the same set, for me, it was go big or go home. I waited over 20 years for this and who knows if I would return! You know what I really wanted? Same dish like this but in the segment, they also had these giant ebi fry. Oh that would have been awesome but this was good too! Can you believe…the chicken (the one with the red sauce on top) was the best part of the dish? The steak was actually bit dry and tough. I think I like everything else over the steak I got. I got the orange juice and absolutely enjoyed my experience.

Just wanted to show you my set up close and the big order of rice it comes with. Kat was good and asked for less rice, no way I was gonna do that. LOL, thank you to Chan and Kat for being part of one of my bucket list items come true!!!

Chan and I took a train out to Hiratsuka located within Kanagawa (my first time!) to meet up with two of his friends. I will say, the best meals we had during the trip were definitely at restaurants his friends’ (locals!!) chose. We dined in at Takeman and it was a wonderful experience; ambience, excellent service, food, everything was perfect!!! No English menu folks and we were served a set menu…so no real names of dishes here…sorry! It was all so delicious though…

Each of us had our own setting with a unique image – details!

Every dish was delicious and beautifully presented. Thank you to Takao for introducing this restaurant to us! Takao then drove us up to beautiful Komayama Park.

The park had one restaurant and check this out folks…

It was called Aloha Market and they sold Hawaiian plate lunches and specialties including “marasada.” Too bad we just ate lunch, I would have tried something!