Time to post about my second visit to Japan. While I was still pretty clueless, my brother had been living in Tokyo for a while now, so I pretty much had a guided tour, which was pretty cool. What I didn’t expect was for it to still be so cold the first couple of days! That was mainly because it was also rainy; the last few days were nice and warm.

I had wanted to book a nice restaurant while I was here, but alas, the ones I wanted were all closed! It wasn’t until afterwards that I realised that it was because the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best awards were on. Then I didn’t mind so much that I missed out. Maybe next time!

Here’s some ramen, because ramen is what you eat when you land in Japan. I always forget what this place is called, I think it’s Tokyo Base. They use the same tonkotsu broth as Ippudo and it was delicious! I’d been so ramen deprived (deliberately so, because Perth) so this was fantastic. It’s just how I like it!

My first coffee stop, a place called Light Up coffee, with a really pleasant light blue colour scheme and a cute shiba inu theme!!! And the coffee here was great! This was the Ethiopia Guji, and it was roasted lighter than Sydney stuff. It was so delicious! And of course I had to get the lights reflecting in my coffee cause it’s the cool thing to do. It kind of looks like a face!

I saw a sign for taiyaki after leaving Light Up, so we had a look around. It was tasty, but I didn’t feel it was anything too special.

More ramen, this time at a place called Ichiran, which is really popular and one of my brother’s favourite ramen places. The broth was super rich, to the point where it was thicker than what I prefer. I also wish I had ordered extra firm noodles rather than just firm, as it had softened past my liking. I really like that there are so many different kinds of ramen out there!

Isn’t this so cool? The only thing I hated about my trip was that I’d overcaffeinated far too early, so by the time I got to Japan, I was very limited with my coffee intake. Luckily, this cafe, called Uni Stand, had a nice selection of green teas, so I wanted to try them. I’d forgotten that Japanese green tea is very savoury, so I was really glad when they asked what kind of tea I usually like. I said I like sweeter teas, so they recommended their tea of the day instead of their single origin teas. I don’t actually remember what it was, but I was glad they offered it, because it was really drinkable though still more savoury than what I like.

My brother also immediately spotted the nixie tube clock, and when I tried to take a picture of it, I noticed that my camera was seeing the numbers differently! Some were flickering more than others whereas the eye could only see the ones that were fully lit, I thought that was pretty cool!

This tickled my hipster sense a little. A kale juice shop! It’s kind of hilarious. I also don’t know if it was open when I walked past, as I half expected this to be some kind of hipster magnet with queues of beards and topknots trailing out.

What’s a visit to Tokyo without sushi. My brother liked this place, so in  we went (after queuing for a while, of course!). I went a bit crazy and chose all the things that I wouldn’t be able to obtain easily in Aus. So here are the raw baby sardines. I love that it’s just a massive pile of dead creatures! I think the eyes are the cutest bit, though these had the extra appeal of being see through. It didn’t taste that great though; for me this had a bit too much bitterness that wasn’t smoothed out by any other flavour.

Next up, mounds of raw sakura ebi. More cute eyes of dead things!! These tasted better, though I gotta say, it is still a weird feeling to eat raw dead things whole.

A classic: giant cooked prawns.

Probably a snapper or variation thereof. I love looking at that red skin!

I love shellfish. When I saw all the shellfish available, I had to order some. They were also some of the more expensive items on the menu, but even then, my brother found the bill at the end to not be as high as he thought it’d be. And I’m so glad I got to try all these things! This was whelk. Too bad I’m posting this way later than I wanted, because I can’t remember too much about how this tasted.

Akagai!! I love this because it’s often presented as a curly thing. I’ve actually never seen the rest of it being served on sushi, so I have no idea how that tastes. I just know the curly and muscle are super tasty.

And the lovely geoduck! Yeah! Don’t ever google this while someone else is looking cause it’s so dodgy looking, but it tastes really good!

I’ve forgotten what this was, though knowing me, it’s either sardine or mackerel.

Not quite the hotaru ika I was expecting, but still super adorable! Just look at that eye! Isn’t it brilliant? And yes, eating this whole was a really weird experience for me, because I had to concentrate and not think about the fact I was consuming squid guts. It wasn’t too bad, actually, I kind of liked it!

What’s better than a super baby canele after dinner!

Even though cafes in Japan close late, they still close! After sushi we went to Verve, but they were closing, so we couldn’t dine in. I wasn’t too fussed. I took the Kenyan filter in a takeaway cup, and while it was quite take-away-y, it still tasted good. I loved the way they attached the information card with a tissue that doubled to soak up any leaks! Not that the coffee leaked. I still found it super cute, as if it was a scarf around my coffee.

Because I wasn’t able to book a restaurant, my brother suggested that the budget be allocated to travelling outside of Tokyo instead. So a trip to Osaka it was!

 

First stop, Nara park for the deer. It was so cool seeing all the deer just chilling and unafraid of humans! My brother found that they were surprisingly not aggressive for food, probably because we were in holiday season so all the tourists had fattened up the deer already. So many uneaten biscuits were all over the ground!

Also, taking a selfie with a deer is an incredibly difficult task. I couldn’t manage to do it with my phone! But that’s okay, because taking pictures of just the deer was enough! I love taking pictures of things.

Yes, that’s not a deer. But look how adorable he is!

And the great deer exodus of 6pm, where they somehow just know to cross the road and to what was presumably their sleeping area.

The next day, Kyoto, where pigeons are real creatures that know how to perch on branches.

It’s actually a really pretty view here.

Yeah gogo pigeons! Chase that food!

And one of the reasons we were here. % Arabica, and yes, their decor is as gorgeos as the pictures show. What I didn’t realise was that it was an espresso based, takeaway only cafe. Of course, I was in the mood for dine in filter. Oh well, coffee is still coffee! There was a pretty long queue here, and the only inefficiency that I found really odd was that they used 1L milk cartons… for a predominantly milk coffee based customer base. That was really confusing, because I would figure that a juggler system with large volume milk bladders would have been more efficient!

Apparently %Arabica’s selling point is their latte art, which threw me off a bit, but I decided I may as well check it out. And yes, it’s nice! But it’s not why I drink coffee….

As we were sipping away, my brother was rather bemused because passers by would often wonder aloud what the place was and why there was a queue.

What a cool picture. This is the bamboo forest, and I had a stroke of genius by realising I can do a panoramic shot upwards! It makes the bamboo look about as tall as it really is in real life.

Anyone up for tofu? My brother found this place on a previous visit, and it’s easily recognisable because there’s a little steam spout at the front. It made it a very inviting and homely kind of place. And it specialises in all things tofu. I love tofu, so I was definitely very interested in what this place had to offer.

So many different textures here!!! My favourite was the teoke yuba, which is apparently soy milk skin. By name, it didn’t sound particularly appetising, but once I had it, I realised it was pure genius – it was just like eating mozarella curds! Think of it like the outside of burrata. It was so delicious because the texture was spot on! Oh man, it was so good. This was a really satisfying lunch!

The warabi mochi. Oh wow. Yeah. This place knows how to make warabi mochi too. This was my first time having it, and even though I’d seen it before, I was always hesitant to try some in case the texture didn’t match what I imagined in my head. But this, this impressed me so much! I imagine this is similar to how a water mochi cake is like. This was soft, and pretty much like… solid water. Sounds weird, but basically, it didn’t have an obviously jelly like texture. It had a very melt in the mouth feeling, and “wet” but in the way that makes sense and is amazing.

I like to think that I’ve eaten enough that I can sometimes recognise when something is incredibly good even though I’ve never had it before. Sometimes you can simply benchmark the first sample to be the best. This was such a thing, and it was confirmed when I sampled some warabi mochi later on somewhere else – it just wasn’t as good, and was closer to the texture of jelly, which is not what I like from my warabi mochi. It has to feel like it’s *just* bound together and simply “flows” apart in the mouth.

Next up, the Silver Temple. My brother had asked me the night before which of the two temples I wanted to visit, gold or silver, and after reading up the descriptions of both, I opted for silver. It was less glamorous, but boasted a better garden – one with many varieties of moss. Because lil’ Gilg was on this trip with me, and he likes moss, I opted for Silver. It was a good choice, though the way the garden was designed meant that I couldn’t have lil’ Gilg taking a stroll through the greenery.

And of course, the famous Fushimi Inari shrine. Given that it was bustling with tourists, it was hard to get a shot of the orange pillar things without having people in it. Oh well! I love all the fox statues around, and the food offerings here were pretty hilarious. It’s a wonderful and massive place and lovely to walk through!

With Kyoto done in a day, it was time to return to Osaka. So here is the obligatory shot of the most famous picture of Osaka!

And some late night coffee at Lilo Coffee Roasters. Here we met another Australian and had a great chat, though my brother and I aren’t really stellar conversationalists. This Colombia Las Brisas was super tasty, though I noticed a lot of fines at the bottom of my cup. Luckily the fellow Australian offered to pass on my compliments, and managed to find out that they use a metal filter here for their pourovers, which explains how the fines got through.

Next day, more coffee! This time from Streamer Coffee Company. My brother said that this place was also famous for their latte art. What?! I was getting a little perplexed. How can you have a cafe that is famous for latte art? Isn’t the quality of the coffee more important and a better indicator of the quality of the cafe? Maybe that’s just my inner pretentious hipster though.

It didn’t get any better after I ordered the standard “Streamer Latte”. They had nice La Marzoccos, but the normal advantages of showing off naked portafilters and having the extraction visible from across the counter meant that I saw the super dark, slow drips of espresso coming out. Um, where is my lovely smooth golden extraction that has a well defined stopping point? I was getting a little worried. That being said, I knew that the milk going in would probably smooth out some of the not so great bits of the espresso.

Then came the shocker. A 12oz cup. Wow, that’s a lot of milk. Why would you use that much milk? You only need 5.5 oz…. And sure, a complex pattern might justify the increased volume, but all I got was a swan, and even then I’ve had much better swans in smaller cups. My brother got a triple rosetta which was slightly nicer, but again, totally doable in a 5.5 oz cup. I was a little traumatised now, since my coffee was mediocre tasting with a mediocre latte art.

It didn’t get much better when I decided that getting fluffy pancakes would be a novel experience. These were from a chain called Gram. They look super fluffy and light (though stacking them three high is not really a great idea since they fall rather quickly), but they were actually rather heavy. Maybe I shouldn’t try these things from chains, but I hadn’t done prior research (especially not for anything outside Tokyo; I didn’t even have an Osaka/Kyoto coffee list because I never actually anticipated that I’d end up visiting) so this was as good as I was going to get on a whim.

Next up, Mel Coffee Roasters. They looked nice enough in the tiniest space, and advertised both light and dark roasts. I gotta say, light and dark roasts are really confusing. I know exactly what I want, but it’s hard to gauge what a roaster means by dark and light unless you really know your coffee. I didn’t think to check the colour of the beans to decide how I wanted my drink. All I know is that I preferred light roasts, and that they can display some amazing nuances of flavour when extracted properly, and that dark was the simpler of the two roasts for extracting as espresso. So I went for a light roast espresso. Guatemala was what they had (or recommended, I don’t really remember). I would have probably chosen a Kenyan or Ethiopian since they’re the ones that are the easiest to assess for flavour, but I don’t mind trying to assess coffees from other regions.

This was far to bright and lacked the body that I figure you can even extract from light roasts (think Seven Seeds, who roast far lighter than my liking but the flavours are technically still probably good). I definitely wanted more chocolate notes in this.

“Enlightened” by my morning cafe adventures, it was time to take in the street scenes. Like these lamps, which were really awesome looking and all had individual personalities, expressed by the different colours and styles.

I love seeing all the restaurants here with constructs of their food on display!

One of the specialties here is kushikatsu, basically, fried things on sticks. I’m so glad my brother took me here! Finally, Osaka redeemed itself! My brother and I ordered one of the sets, and the appetiser was this thing called a doteyaki, which had beef bits and konnyaku and was so flavoursome! I need to learn how to make this!

I actually took pictures of each individual stick before and after biting into them, but that would have been too spammy! While they don’t look like much, they were really nicely fried with thin, not too oily batters and great quality ingredients inside. This was the Classic Soohonten with beef, prawn, scallops, lotus root, ginger, chicken meatball, whiting, rice cake, sausage.

And what do we find after lunch? What I believe to be some sort of psychological experiment to see what people do when they come across this poster.

Our visit to Osaka Castle Park resulted in many sakura pictures, but here are a couple of the animals that also enjoy this place.

After two jam packed days in Osaka, it was finally time to return to Tokyo. I really wanted a cool bento for the ride home, but it turns out all the ones with lots of raw seafood sell out really quickly. So the best I got was this crab meat, herring roe and salmon roe box. Turns out herring roe is actually really delicious!

The specialty tea that Starbucks was offering however, was not as enjoyable as I wanted – the mango and mandarin tea frappe was far to sweet and artificial tasting!

I forgot exactly when I took this picture, especially because I’m too lazy to look up the metadata. But these were some tiny strawberries that tasted so sweet and amazing! I love the strawberries in Japan because the ones in Aus are always too sour! It was funny though, I ate them but couldn’t find a bin to dispose of the green bits. It was then that my brother explained there were no “general rubbish” bins. That made it really awkward to eat things on the go. So I gave up and started eating all of the strawberry instead!

Yeah Shake Shack time! In the trendy suburb of Ebisu. I didn’t know what to expect except that Shake Shack is very popular. There was a small line when we went, and they had a pretty interesting menu. Something about a grape shake?

Anyway, I went for the classic burger, and decided the dessert of “e-bean-su” was also worth trying. We also got a side of normal and cheesy fries.

I gotta say, that burger does not disappoint! I was very impressed by it! Not only was it cheap, it was also delicious! It reminded me a lot of Burger Project. In a blind taste test, I don’t think I’d be able to pick out which was which… except that Burger Project’s patty is better. I was seriously enjoying this!

The E-bean-su concrete was also really tasty! Containing vanilla custard, red bean caramel sauce, marshmallow sauce, salted shortbread cookie, soy bean powder. Given my last taste of frozen custard was at Gojima and it was a hard block of frozen stuff, this was so much better, and felt like it was a really well made dessert. I didn’t really enjoy the ice cream at Burger Project either. That being said, having a burger, chips and dessert is a bit much so I’d be happy with just the burger and chips. Or two burgers, or something.

The chips didn’t stand out as much as the burger so I don’t remember exactly what they were like. All I know is that the cheesy fries were really heavy, so just the normal ones are a better choice.

And trying some woodberry coffee roasters. It was the second time (though apparently an earlier recount of this says I’d seen it multiple times?) I’d seen this roaster featured at a cafe, and my gut was telling me to visit, so in I went. They were actually really tasty and I enjoyed the Guatemalan as a filter!

And while walking around taking pictures of sakura, I also managed to find this dog in her majestic glory.

So when this sign is outside a shop… what do you think the inside features?

The ultimate mirror selfie stick… for whatever reason.

So after my disastrous coffee attempt at Streamer Coffee Company, and even my surprise about %Arabica being espresso and milk based, I wanted a tiny little milk coffee done properly. So here we were at Onibus, and I pointed to their piccolo glass and wanted a milk coffee rather than chance a massive latte if I just ordered from the menu. And so here it was! It still wasn’t the same as getting a milk coffee from Aus though. This was a tad too light and the milk wasn’t creamy or sweet enough for my liking. So I think I’ll stick to filter coffees in Japan, cause they are really good at brewing that stuff.

Also, look what I found at Switch Coffee! My brother was pretty amazing and managed to end up back here from pure memory whereas I had no clue where I was. The coffee was OK, but the real excitement was seeing this scribble on the wall! I’m sure I saw this at the time Rene posted about it, but it must have been so long ago! So here’s me taking a picture because then it’s “proof” that I saw this for myself, right?

Dinner was a pretty long queue at a place that one of the baristas that I stalk, posted about a while back. It was a really interesting tonkatsu restaurant that only had two things on the menu: pork, and pork. The difference was the cut, with one being loin and one being fillet or something? Because my brother ordered for the both of us (I think it was just the “standard’ order or something), I didn’t have to agonise over anything and enjoyed watching all the staff in action.

They had one person who kept track of everyone who came in, took orders and then called you when a seat was ready. Everyone else also had very specialised roles – one person to dip the pork in batter and fry it, another to simply cut the pork. And there were other people involved for all the sides – there must have been one person slaving away shredding a kazillion cabbages!

I’m not sure exactly how juicy these fillets can get, but I was hoping for them to be slightly less cooked and more juicy than what I actually tasted. Or it could just be my imagination not matching what’s possible in real life. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll find out!

The next day, it was time to test out another burger joint. This time it was a place called The Great Burger, apparently one of the places that Ume burger/restaurant mentioned. It had a short line in the morning, and it was very American style. They had large plastic covered menus with just about every diner item you could think of. All I wanted was to try the burger, though one thing that caught my eye was the “hot pineapple juice”, so I had to get that too. It turns out that really is hot pineapple juice, with a stick of cinnamon and some butter! It reminded me a lot of grilled pineapple, so I enjoyed it as a novelty drink.

The burger, on the other hand… ugh. Like all burgers, it looked ok. But tastewise, it was awful. The beef patty had lots of chewy bits in it (and considering I like chewy bits and didn’t like this, that’s saying something) but was also flavourless. I don’t understand. I’ve never had a flavourless beef patty before. Maybe McDonald’s? But I haven’t had a burger from there recently enough to actually confirm; and even then their condiments have flavour (even if its just cheap simple flavour like sweet tomato sauce and sour pickles). I could taste the salt and pepper around the patty, but not the patty itself. It was really, really disappointing.

The chips were great though, so I ate all of that.

If you need a burger, go Shake Shack.

Next up, Dominique Ansel, since it was on the list and we were in the area. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a queue, so we could look at all the pastries on display and order at our leisure. I really loved the look of the bunny religeuse, so I definitely had to order that. It reminded me of the days when I studied French and we learned what a religeuse was.

And of course, I had to get the cronut. Cause who doesn’t order a cronut at Dominique Ansel! This time it was the violet lychee flavour. And my brother wasn’t kidding when he said it was large and filling.

I also got a tomato bread (which had to be eaten same day), which I ate the day after and it was so-so; not what I was expecting. It was bread with tomato filling rather than what I thought would be tomato flavoured bread.

They had a large cute bun called “Mr. Roboto” which basically to me, looked like the face of a cyberman, so I had to get it. That was delicious even though I don’t remember the filling! It had a really nice sugary crust, too.

And finally we ducked into one of the Blue Bottles, just cause. I was super seriously overcaffeinated, to the point where I couldn’t actually finish my coffee here. But it was nice to have tasted some!!

I still feel the smaller chains do coffee better. I guess I’m just a hole in the wall person than one who enjoys a large flashy joint.

And finally, white strawberries! That was quite a quest! Basically, I’d been wanting to eat a white strawberry on this visit, but at first, the ones I saw were too expensive for my liking so I didn’t buy them, and then afterwards, I stopped seeing them/they were always sold out, so I was getting more and more prepared to fork out money for these.

Luckily, on my second last night, I finally found some at a reasonable price! Though they weren’t as white as I what I was hoping for. Are they worth it? They taste “white” in the same way that white peaches and nectarines compare to their yellow counterparts. It’s the same kind of difference in flavour, if that makes sense. Basically, I still like the red ones better as I feel they pack stronger, bolder flavours.

And finally, I was left to my own devices on my last day in Japan, as my brother had work. He recommended an itinerary that took me through Ginza and headed towards Skytree, and I was actually impressed that I managed to get around, considering I took some detours, walked half of it, and then doubled back!

Breakfast was at Tsukiji fish markets, where I got some tuna, uni and salmon roe on rice. It was the food I wanted for the shinkansen. Luckily it was a ticket dispensing machine, so I managed to obtain food without too much issue.

From there, I then trekked to Glitch, which was very high on my list because it’s popped up on a few of my barista’s lists. Oh man, they had a geisha, and it was an amazing one! Panama Esmerelda, can’t go wrong. It was NICE after having so many full bodied Kenyans, this one was just so light and fruity and floral! Wow. Yay. I would have loved to try more coffee here and buy their tote bag too! But I wanted to make sure I didn’t run out of money. So maybe next time!

I managed to end up in Akihabara halfway through the day, even though it wasn’t the next step in my itinerary. Oh well! I spotted some magikarp taiyaki so I had to buy one!!! It was tastier than the taiyaki I had at the beginning of this trip.

I then remembered that I also had to visit the Tokyu Food Show, which was a massive food hall. They had so many delicious looking things!!!

I bought a chirashi for breakfast the next morning since I had an early departure, but also spotted some pretty sakura jellies and desserts that I had to resist buying too many of.

Then there was the wagashi!! I was hoping to get one of these in Kyoto, but didn’t see any (though I didn’t look particularly hard), and so I had to buy one here! It’s softer than it looks and has sweet bean paste inside.

I was pretty much doing everything out of order now, but I wanted to make sure I got to About Life Coffee Brewers too. It’s funny, from the pictures, I always imagined this being on the corner of a busy street, rather than facing a little side street! I enjoyed a tasty Ethiopian here, though I think they got my order mixed up or something and so apologised for the delay. There were some other coffee enthusiasts there and we had a chat about coffee in Australia, which was pretty fun.

I don’t remember exactly how I ended up here again (same place as when I first visited Tokyo), all I know is that somewhere here I visited Asakusa to see the street full of kitchenware and plastic food supplies, which was pretty cool. Then I figure it was Skytree time, since I’d be able to catch the sunset.

What I didn’t know was how to get there… so I pretty much walked all the way! And even then I was confused as to how to enter into the actual Skytree ticket line so I had to do a few rounds before I finally got there.

That being said, I timed it pretty much perfectly since it would have been enough time for sunset. This was the shot looking up in the elevator :D

What a cool picture of the sun! It was hiding behind a light cloud hiding behind a dark cloud!

I wasn’t able to take very good pictures of the actual sunset though since there was far too much glass everywhere. I’d gotten so used to being on open air observation decks that I couldn’t get a good shot through glass.

I also couldn’t be bothered waiting for the lights to go on for night time, so I left and headed towards Akihabara.

I pretty much spent the night oggling at pretty figurines because that’s what Akihabara is amazing for. Saber on a bike didn’t look as amazing as it did the first time I saw it, which was a good thing. I still wanted to spend stupid amounts of money on it and all the other figurines though!

After shops began to close, I decided dinner was a good idea because I was starving. I hadn’t actually eaten anything substantial since morning. My brother said there was a hokkaido ramen place, and I remembered walking past it, so I decided to take his recommendation. The problem was, I didn’t remember exactly where I saw it, except that my brother’s description of being near a kebab place made sense, but I couldn’t even remember where the kebab place was!!! It was all good though, because I eventually did manage to find it (I couldn’t find it on google probably because it wasn’t listed as “hokkaido ramen”).

It was another ticket dispensing machine place, which was great, except I’d somehow forgotten how these things worked, possibly because this also had different sized buttons and I was totally missing the fact that the ramen options were the massive buttons – I thought they were simply pictures! It took me at least 5 minutes, asking the staff twice because I couldn’t figure it out. Finally, I figured that the staff were pointing at the big buttons so I got my ticket for shio ramen and some gyoza.

Oh man, this was delicious. I’m glad I came here! I found that Tokyo Base, Ichiran and this place were all good, but I don’t have a preference for Ichiran’s style of soup base. I didn’t actually know that shio ramen could be this good until I tried it here! Definitely a place worth going back to.

The gyoza were great, too. Not as good as the ones I remember my brother once making, but still super delicious!

And finally, passing the night in Shibuya. I spent ages agonising on whether I should go into the Starbucks or not, but I decided not to because there simply wasn’t anything I wanted from there. Being on street level had its benefits though, because there was a photoshoot going on! That pretty red dress caught my eye so I joined in with all the other people who started taking photos.

The couple were rushing out every time the lights turned green, and there’d be lots of shooting, then they’d have to run back as soon as the lights turned red again. This happened several times and was fun to watch, though very hard to capture a shot for – mainly because I wanted to showcase them in the crowd rather than isolation, so not getting heads in the way while keeping them in the spotlight and also showing the location was a challenge.

It was a nice ending to my stay! I actually had such a blast exploring by myself that I kind of wish I had more days like that because I really started to take everything in rather than just follow my brother around blindly. Who knows, there might still be a next time!