Japan 2019 - Part 3
Yay, Hakodate, my brother's favourite town! Little did I know, but this was going to become my favourite town too, but for different reasons. First stop once we were off the super hokuto, was Lucky Pierrot.
Wow the interior of these places is like nothing I'd ever expected! And to think, these guys love Chinese fried chicken XD Since this was our first time, my brother ordered Set A for us since that was a good intro to the food here.
This was some iced tea. No sugar at all, which is interesting because I'm used to receiving cold sugary drinks at diners. But this is Japan, so it's a plain iced tea!
A mug o' chips!! Yeah!! Tasty chips with.. cheese sauce?
And this burger. Yeah that's some nice fried chicken! Loads of flavour! This was such a good feed even though I'd eaten plenty on the train! Definitely a great spot to eat at and all the different shops have different decor!
The streets around where we were staying were fairly quiet, as we weren't quite in the touristy area. Then, we caught the tram (they have trams here!!) to a place called Goryokaku. Little did I know that this was going to be the most amazing place ever.
Goryokaku is a fortress, and surrounded by water. What an interesting shape.
And here's a plaque of someone? I don't know who that is though. But there was a giant tour group of Chinese people and they were being explained who this was, and then all the tourists started touching the face. Omg why were they touching the face, who was this person ;_;
Oh. OH. When my brother said I'd get to see a place where Hijikata was mentioned, I didn't realised just how famous he is around here...
So many statues of him!! Wow!! I mean, I knew he was a real person after getting obsessed with PeaceMaker Kurogane, but I didn't realise just how prominent of a figure he was! Everyone loves Hijikata here! Goryokaku was his fortress (well, not "his" lol). There's so much history here!
There are even cartoon versions of him. And he's the official guide for Hakodate! Wow!!
You cannot believe how excited I was at all this. This trip was great, and Abashiri prison was pretty inspiring, and Noboribetsu was a really different experience, but Goryokaku. I don't have words for this. There was something about seeing the "real" Hijikata that was actually, quite literally life changing. He's not even my favourite "character"! That still belongs to Okita Souji, PMK version. But omg. I need to come back here to fully explore this fort, twice over ;_;
This place is truly amazing. I absolutely have to come back and explore ALL OF IT.
I also found a sakura anmitsu that I totally had to have. The jelly was not the standard dense agar agar texture, and I liked this better! Plus they had the tri-colour dango, which actually reminded me a lot of the one that Okita was eating in one of the episodes of PMK. I'm so obsessed!
Ok. That night everyone really wanted crab, so we went to a restaurant that had several live crab tanks. My brother found it amusing that someone had left a very poor review somewhere about this place, but I got a good vibe from it, so we went in. We opted for a snow crab and a king crab, and my dad went and chose the (un)lucky crustacea that would become our dinner!
We had half sashimi and half boiled for each one. Look at the way the flesh is structured, it almost looks like grapes off a vine! I dunno that's just the way I saw it. Both species of crab were super delicious, but the snow crab is sweeter!
Oh, here are my camera pics.
After a very satisfying dinner, some night photography!
And a yubari melon! Yeah! I've wanted one for a long time. It wasn't quite the right season for it though and it wasn't quite ripe, but it was so fragrant! Yubari melons are quite next level compared to the standard Hokkaido melon. It's worth forking out the premium for these ones!
The next morning, it was off to the Hakodate morning markets!
This stall was a place where you can fish your own live squid out of a kiddy pool, and then it gets prepared right in front of you!
Yeah our squid time!!! I took a video of this but our squid kind of just flopped over instead of doing a proper dance hahaha. Plus, I'm not actually the biggest fan of raw squid, but this was worth getting once to see how it all works!
This was the real good stuff, a super tasty seafood bowl! Yeah! I'm totally getting this again the next time I come back!
Also, gorging on yubari melons :D
Hakodate love their squid!! I want to come back for their squid festival and learn the ika odori!
Now it was time to catch the super hokuto, with a Snaffles in hand!
Hello Onuma quasi-national park!
It started to rain as we searched for lunch. There was a cutesey little hot dog shop, but they also sold soba. Not just any soba either. There was a mountain vegetable soba, but what I noticed was the junsai soba. YES JUNSAI SOBA. Omg. I love junsai. So I ordered this for the gooey water plant goodness! I love junsai!
A Goryokaku manhole cover, cool!
Back to the main part of Hakodate. Hahaha a love themed Lucky Pierrot!
I got myself a Snaffle's strawberry shortcake! Yeah!
Haha you can even get a Shinsengumi outfit photo here! Man I'd love to get the entire outfit. The haori itself was something I contemplated getting, but I felt I was unworthy at the time and wouldn't even wear it. So much samurai stuff here, it was amazing!
For the afternoon and evening, it was a trip up to Mount Hakodate.
Look at those clouds. I actually really enjoyed seeing the clouds from up here, because the sunrays were amazing!
Haha look a Shinsengumi collectible dispensing machine! Oh man I really wanted to get the haori and the flag ones, and maybe the Hijikata ones. It took a while for me to understand that this required 2x 100 yen coins; I couldn't figure out why 1 wasn't making it turn lol. And my first one was the green one!! I don't even know who that was ;_; So I rolled again, and got my flag version, yay! I'm getting so many Shinsengumi souvenirs here hahah.
Hakodate at night!
One the sun had set, we headed back down as quickly as possible - the cable car was shutting down early because there was going to be a lightning storm at night! We headed over to a beer house, which had a really delicious house beer!
Some wagyu nigiri!
I also had to get pickles because I love pickles. There's even pickled burdock! Yeah!
Steak, which was quite tasty!
If I remember, this was the "Genghis Khan". Glad we got to try this! This place had really nice food! And that was it for that night.
Our final day in Hakodate, and the family stayed in for a bit, so I took a walk to the nearby shrine, and then over to the morning markets to see if I could find that sushi shop I spotted the other day.
Huzzah! I managed to find the sushi place and I placed my order in Japanese! Well, everything except for surf clam. I am really bad at knowing the mollusc names in Japanese, though my fish ordering abilities are adequate for common things I want to eat. I got my tamago, my akami maguro, otoro, surf clam, hotate, botan ebi, and uni! Woohoo!
A live squid transport!
This was a really cool alleyway. I'd love to explore it since it seems like there might be shops in here!
A pit stop at Lucky Pierrot where my brother stocked up on heaps of goods here to take back to Tokyo, while I tried out the soft serve.
My mum saw these massive squid cookie things (I have no idea what to call them... battered flattened squid???) and wanted one, so I ordered one for her. It's "fun" to hear the screaming squid as they get flatted in the squisher box thing XD. It's pretty tasty too!
My lovely gold foil bento for the shinkansen back to Tokyo. I love the bentos here!
And a taste of sea pineapple. It's not very yummy XD. My brother spotted this on the food carts that are on this train! I guess that's one more animal to add to my list of things eaten :D Not that I have a list lol.
Goodbye Hakodate, goodbye Hokkaido. You were actually more amazing than I imagined. I'll have to come back for Goryokaku for sure, and the quasi national park, and maybe even Noboribetsu! Hijikata-san you are amazing!!!
Japan 2019 – Part 2
Hello Sapporo!! The first night we simply explored around a little bit and ate at another random izakaya. It was cool walking through the massive park and seeing the clocktower. The Panasonic tower looked pretty cool too, but we didn't go up.
It was actually hilarious because my brother likes checking that we've been paying attention to where we're going by asking my parents and I to find the way back. I'm terrible with directions anyway, being heavily reliant on Google to tell me where to go. For once, my landmarks weren't food places. On the way back, I recognised the street full of bridal shops and that's how I knew we were going the right way XD
A specialty milk specialty coffee shop! Forget single origins, here you can choose different types of milk for your coffee!
My brother tried the unhomogenised jersey milk from Biei, and my mum chose holstein milk from Hakodate. Those drinks ended up being more chocolate-heavy rather than creamy or letting acidity through, which was interesting, because I would have expected the jersey milk to perform quite well and make for a super sweet and creamy drink.
My flat white made with guernsey milk from Takinoe. It ended up tasting the sweetest and creamiest of the three which was surprising.
Otaru!! We spent half a day here and it's a really nice place!
Taking a pic of my brother taking a pic of ice cream!
Warabi mochi!! Man I love this stuff so much!
This set of clouds was really interesting, reminded me of angel wings!
I love all the running people carts!
What a cute little seagull! I kind of wish I could have been in two places at once lol. I was too busy taking a kazilion photos of this fellow, so i wasn't able to then back away and take photos of the crowd taking photos of the seagull XD Oh well!
I need to get myself a yukata one day...
There's an abandoned railway here too with plenty of things to take pictures of!
Ah, a better shot of the angel wings clouds!
The sky is so nice! We stayed here till sunset to take photos of the river, but none of my photos were actually that good XD
Haha the Lawson's here had clear mochi! So I had to go buy some. Also, there's something here called "Mo-cheese" or similar that was also really tasty! It was cheese flavoured mochi, and it was amazing! This was for the train ride away from Sapporo.
Wow, Noboribetsu! My brother gave us a heads up that it was a little sulfur-smelling here, but during our stay, it was quite mild. But I think I've now got the smell ingrained into my brain and when I boil eggs all I can think about are the sulfur pits of Noboribetsu ;_;
I absolutely love that this is a demon town. So many demons everywhere!!!
We went to one of the small shops that looked like they do BBQs. All the seafood! Molluscs and shellfish are the best! Though the sea snails on a stick were not as tasty as I imagined they might be XD
Tea and sweets at our hotel!
To the bear park!! These bears were actually super lively and wave at people for food :D
They also hate the crows.
And a duck race too! The ducks didn't look too impressed though haha
Those are the males, in a separate enclosure. And that little spot with people in it, is a place where you can feed the bears!
And the reason the bears don't like the crows: they steal food! But the actual biscuits are too big for the crows to eat, so there was a funny moment where the bears were chasing a crow around while the crow kept dunking the biscuit in a puddle of water till it softened enough for it to eat XD
Hell Valley, a super cool place! There's a lot of walking trails here to go through and some of them are quite tricky to navigate. One path even has a quiz about the area, which was fun to do since it also had English on it.
There's also a spring in town that actually starts bubbling like crazy for a while every few hours. My brother's right, it sounds like a washing machine! Pretty cool to watch!
Dinner at the hotel was pretty amazing. It was funny because as I saw all the food, I said, "it feels like a kaiseki!" and my brother responded with, "that's because it is a kaiseki!" lol. This place had really nice food! I really enjoyed eating here!
Sakura tofu!
Sashimi
Broad bean paste stuff, with a super cute demon club shaped carrot XD
Hotpot!
We even got a whole fish, and some tempura fish. There's so much food!
Snow crab and a delicate vinegar sauce
A strawberry dessert.
There's a massive golden demon club here that has regular "performances" where the demons pop out and do a little dance. I can't imagine enjoying this more than a couple of times though!
I do love this place, it's a super nice hotel and the onsen here was huge too! There were all these different pools with different minerals and properties, and an outdoors area too. But the best bit was that this place had a dry sauna. Woah it was hot! But really enjoyable to be in there (in a help I'm a melting sweaty mess kind of way) and I liked alternating between that and the pools. There was also a section that had heavy "chunks" of water that fell down, so it was a massage for the shoulders and neck! While Noboribetsu is quite small, I wouldn't mind coming back here again!
Oh yeah, I'm totally a local and doing the stamp collecting thing!
Bye bye Noboribetsu! Onwards to Hakodate, my brother's favourite town..
Japan 2019 - Part 1
Oh man too many holidays at once. This Japan trip was actually a family holiday, where my mum wanted to visit a heap of different places. The trip was mainly based in Hokkaido, and I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy the trip or not since it wasn't a food based trip, and I've never done a not-food-based-trip before. It turns out I loved it! It's rare for my to have a life changing holiday, but this one was pretty incredible. Because I'm still sick of typing many words, this will just be mainly picture spam because I took a LOT of photos!
We started off in Tokyo, and here's a coffee my brother fetched for me. It's notable because it's a warm can, and apparently it's a single origin - Ethiopia Mokka. It didn't taste terrible, just bland XD
I also traded my brother some more of my St Ali instant coffee for this Supreme Coffee instant coffee. I haven't tried it yet though!
A trip to Life Size Cribe, and I had no idea that red beans and butter on toast was a thing XD My brother ordered this and it was pretty tasty! Maybe I'll have to try making my own at some point!
Coffee with Mugi!!!
Lunch at Shake Shack. Yeah I know, I've just come from America. But it's still tasty!
Haneda Airport, domestic terminal. Look they have a wasabi plant on display! And I finally got my hands on some saba sushi. This was my plane snack, and it's just as I imagined! Good strong vinegar flavour to offset the really yummy fatty-fishiness!
The AirDo plane's bear totally looks like a koala. Hello Kushiro!
Most of this trip simply involved eating at places that looked decent. This was a cute little place!
Oden and whale meat! Yay now I can say I've eaten a sentient creature >_>
So many pictures at a fish market in Kushiro. This ended up being my pick your own seafood bowl. Plus the sad looking crab on the side. All of this cost about 3200 yen. The crab was a bit disappointing because it was still partly frozen. The seafood bowl, on the other hand, was quite nice! I love getting fresh seafood here! I also ate some asparagus and pumpkin. Pumpkin here is totally different from the main types of pumpkin back in Aus! These ones are dense and creamy, like the texture of chestnuts! I had a hard time liking them because they were heavier than I expected, but still tasted good!
We had a hire car for the beginning of the trip, so we went and visited the national park and wetlands.
Yay I got to do some trainspotting by following my brother around! It's actually a fun thing to do!
It's hard to take photos when we're driving twice as fast as the locals. But cows!! Cows everywhere!
There was a cutesy little shop called Poppotei that makes pretty ramen! Pork and seasonal vegetables. I love the colour in this and it tasted good too!
Lake Mashu is super pretty!
You can smell this place before you get here. Sulfur mountains!! This one was quite stinky!
No idea if people are randomly balancing rocks or some other sorcery is at work here...
Our hotel was at Lake Akan. A beautiful place, but watch out for the insane massive nasty mosquitoes that are everywhere!!!
Marimo island! This is where the marimo museum is! I remember hearing about marimos at work in Adelaide cause a friend was talking about it. Now I finally understand what they are!
The museum was small, but it had so many adorable little marimos! It even showed the life cycle of marimo.
There were touchable marimos at our hotel! They are a lot firmer than I thought, and not as fluffy. It's like a short haired rock... kind of XD
On the road again, this time a stopover at Rausu. Look at this massive octopus tentacle! Also that shot has saturated the shadows on my hand :/
Another 3000 yen seafood bowl!!
Found some nesting seagulls on the rooftop opposite where we had lunch!
A waterfall that felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. Tried a few different shutter speeds for this, but I think I still favour fast shutters.
An abandonment that my brother wanted to explore.
Waited around for a train that didn't come because "high temperatures" caused the JR lines to cancel. Instead, found some interesting bugs!
Sunset at Abashiri. My sensor is so dirty!
Set dinner at our hotel. I love the presentation! Grill your own beef, make your own noodle soup, some sashimi, crab, and an all you can eat section too!
Abashiri prison museum. I actually didn't think much of this place when we got here, but wow. The more I walked through and read the information, I ended up really liking this place! It felt like so much more than just a prison. There was a farming section here, including stories about making pickles and cutting edge farming technology. The conditions were harsh, but the prisoners loved it here. It was interesting seeing the prison cells as well, ranging from the 3 to a cell to solitary confinement, and how different materials were used for cells, for different reasons. I didn't take any pictures of this place, but I would love to visit again!
The drive to our next destination was super long, so we had a stopover at a random little stopover place. A simple, onion soup tasting ramen with the weirdest looking "fish stick" thing I've ever seen. At first I thought there was a chunk of bread in my ramen, but it's actually a spongey thing meant to resemble fish stick!
I love seeing rice fields.
Blue Lake. The water is actually super blue, it's a greeny blue and very different from the colour of the sky. This place is famous for these dead looking trees in the water? Not sure what it's all about, but it's pretty!
Look! A bumblebee! I can't believe how big they are! They are sooooo adorable!
Finally a big-ish city, Asahikawa. I call it beer river, just cause XD. Time to try some street photography!
The station here has an interesting sculpture.
My brother alerted me to the presence of sakura mochi ice cream!!! Wooohooo!
A lot of the hotels we were staying at had dinner and/or breakfast included. It turns out I love burdock here! And there's so much jelly. I love jelly! And almond tofu. There's heaps of that too! And the little shishamo fish are everywhere - I had no idea they were all bursting with roe. I made sure to eat plenty since it's hard to get back in Aus!
On the road again, so more rice fields. I'd love to visit these farms and do some rice planting one day - my brother says there are rice planting festivals that people can participate in!
This is the Ken and Mary tree. I actually have no idea who Ken and Mary are, but I think it's cool to have a tree as a tourist attraction. This was quite adorable!
Then we headed to a flower farm. Unfortunately it wasn't quite the right season to see them all in full bloom, but the place was still very picturesque, plus there were heaps of yubari melon goods here!
Yubari melon flavour "the moist stick" financier XD
Rice fields! Everywhere!
Another round of trainspotting. I actually had no idea what my brother was preparing for, so I put on my long lens since the railway track was all the way over there. Good thing, I managed to get a nice shot of the 1 car train!
Tomita farm! Full of flowers, and there's a melon farm next door, but that was closed. It was fun exploring this place!
Someone even brought in their pet parrot to take selfies with XD
They sell lavender coffee here too. Not really sure it had that much lavender flavour, but it was made to order and nice to sip on and relax at the farm.
Also got a half-half of melon and lavender flavoured soft serve since that seems to be a specialty around here.
After leaving Tomita farm, we headed to a place my brother wanted to go to. Furano ramen, a tiny tiny shop in the middle of a tiny town that served cheese ramen. Apparently lots of people leave messages about the fantastic ramen here, which was awesome! This ramen was a tad spicy, but really nice! The toilet here is apparently also super old fashioned, but I didn't feel like checking it out hahahaha. Definitely worth stopping by!
It was actually funny, even though I'm usually the one who gets asked, "how did you find out about this place?" this was the first time that I felt compelled to ask my brother how he found out about the place. It was kind of mystifying, even though I was pretty sure his answer is the same as the way I usually find out about my places. It was still weird being on the asking side instead of the answering side though!
Look! A fox!!! This was actually the third fox we saw, but the only one I managed to take a picture of. They seem used to being around cars and don't panic when we pass them. Interesting!
Can you believe that these are ski fields in winter? Amazing.
I'll end this post here, since now we're in Sapporo. What is this bee doing? Well, I found this corpse at Tomita farm, and managed to have a plastic bag handy to keep it in. Why would I want a corpse? To pose it and take photos of course! However, keeping a dead bumblebee safe was an arduous task. I wanted to make a haiku about carrying the spirit of a bumblebee all across Japan, so that it could experience things that most bumblebees couldn't. Except I never really got a chance to show it off. But it did travel all the way from Tomita farm to Hokodate! What an effort!
Bar Masa
Masa, the 600USD restaurant. Insanely expensive, so much so that I really didn't want to fork out the money for it. However, while staking out Per Se, I noticed that they had what appeared to be a bar section. Turns out they accept walk ins here, and so I decided to hedge my bets. I'd come here, and spend less money than if I went to Masa itself. My goal was 300 - 400USD.
The otoro and caviar is their signature dish, and that's a generous pile of caviar! Wow! It also came with little toast things to spread the tuna on.
Oyster and uni shots! Luckily these weren't the alcoholic version so they were totally enjoyable! I would have preferred to have less of the liquid so that i could really savour the uni and oyster flavours, but even with the tanginess of the shot it still tasted great.
Some refreshing wakame salad with whatever fish was available to go with it. Current menu says sea bream, so I must have had something similar. I'd actually forgotten that it's not the green cheap stuff, this was actually really nice and all different varieties of seaweed!
I also ordered some nigiri, cause who doesn't try out the sushi at a sushi place. I ordered scallop, king crab, mirugai, aoyagi, lean tuna. This was the perfect chance to eat lots of shellfish! I especially liked the mirugai, that meat was really tasty and sweet, and exactly the kind of texture that I enjoy! However, it was interesting that when I received the sushi set, it felt rather underwhelming. It didn't quite feel like I was getting sushi the artform here, instead, just the food. I think there's a distinct difference when you get an omakase, because it just feels that much more special and personal, I think. Here, I felt like I received fish and rice. I think this is the main aspect where the dining room experience probably differs greatly from the bar, and what you end up paying for.
One thing to note, I forgot to mention the bar table. When I did research on Masa, I found out that the sushi bar itself is made of a single piece of really expensive wood. When I sat down at the bar counter, I think it was constructed of a similarly impressive piece of wood! It felt like one long intact piece of tree, finished in a way that made it a very nice table.
I'd finished all the food I'd ordered up to this point, since I wasn't quite sure exactly how much food I'd get per order. I felt like I could still eat, so I asked for the bartender/waitstaff's recommendations. After considering them, I went for my next round of food.
Watched some bartending in action! Another couple had sat down next to me, and started their meal. When the guy had finished his cocktail and offered another one, he accepted, but managed to motion his hand in a way that hit the straw and made some of the drink and garnish splash all over the place. It was so unexpected that he and the bartender started laughing about it, and he even asked me if I saw what happened, to which I responded that I did. He also said that usually he'd ask chef Masa to come out and greet everyone at the bar, but alas, chef Masa was in Japan! Oh well.
After that little event, it was time to get on with the meal.
Oh my goodness. Look at the spines on that sea urchin. Look at that bowl! Look at the urchin dish garnished with white truffle! What is this wonderful thing?!
Haha. It actually reminded me a lot of the "uni-corn" dish that I received at The Table at Kisume, since visually the two looked very alike. Instead of cauliflower and corn though, this was just one big custardy umami bomb. It was so good. So good that even though I was reminded of The Table, I feel like this far exceeded the tastiness of Kisume's rendition! I am so glad that the bartender recommended this dish!
I was pretty set on this rice dish, featuring mushroom rice, salmon and salmon roe. I think the bartender tried to persuade me away from this one, but I really really wanted it, because I love mushroom rice with salmon roe. Well, he might have been right. I did like this, but it wasn't quite the WOW factor that I was hoping for.
I also grabbed another mirugai as sashimi because it was just so tasty!
Finally, after that massive rice dish, I was actually full, and that meant it was time for dessert. I took a look at what was on offer, and a few different things caught my eye. After checking with the bartender how big the ice cream scoops were going to be, I told him what I wanted. He was a bit surprised that I wanted three things! Oh dear. I think I've scared the bartender!
First up, fresh fruit. I'd asked what was available, and he said mango. It wasn't in my top choices for what I might receive (melon was my first preference), and I was wondering where mangoes are sourced from since nothing but apples grew in New York right now. But... hey, I'm on holiday, I'm splurging, let's get the mango.
It was okay, but it wasn't a variety that I was used to eating in Aus. In Aus, I like Kensington Pride mangoes because they're super sweet, soft and juicy. These ones were firmer and had a stronger mango taste to it, much like the ones that my workmate gave me recently. Maybe closer to a Keith or Honeygold? I really do have to go try more mango varieties!
Then this was the grand prize of desserts. Truffle ice cream. Yeah, truffle. You know, the one that comes with a $45 price tag for a SINGLE SCOOP. Call me crazy! That being said, I think the actual price on the receipt ended up being $35. Still hefty!
This was nice. It was smooth and mellow, but I have trouble picking out truffle aroma at these super low temperatures. The actual ice cream didn't quite taste like truffle, but then again, truffle is mostly smell. It still tasted very good, and got better the more I ate it. Was it worth $35? Probably not, but I still appreciated it!
This was actually my favourite dessert (aren't I glad I picked three?). Soba ice cream. Yeah, good old toasty buckwheat flavour! This was really nice, light, and kind of reminded me a bit like what houjicha tastes like. It was the bartender's favourite too! Yay I have great taste!
I was so full after having all my desserts, but I looked over because the sight of the rice dish that the couple next to me just received, seemed to catch my attention. They'd ordered a beef sukiyaki don with foie gras and egg. It looked amazing! The bartender recommended that they mix everything together, and that it was his favourite way of eating it, and that he ate this dish a lot. The couple asked him to mix it for them as a result. So firstly, he split the foie gras between them and placed it on plates. Then, he went in with a spoon and started mashing everything up, letting the yolk mix in with the rice and for the sauce on the beef to infuse into every grain in the entire bowl. Just watching him mix the rice was so appetising that I couldn't help but blurt out "that looks so good, I could probably eat a bowl!"
The bartender looked at me and said something along the lines of "I told you so, but you didn't listen to me!" ahahaha. I guess that's what I get for sticking to the salmon rice! But then, the most amazing thing happened. After the rice got divvied out to the couple, there was half a bowl left. The guy picked up this bowl and handed it over to me. What?! Yes, he was really offering me to eat their food! He even grabbed a small dish that was there so that I could take what I wanted to try it. I asked if he was sure, and he said yes of course, they wouldn't be able to finish it anyway! So I took a little and told them I felt bad for not being able to share anything in return, but he said it was okay. He said, see, New Yorkers are a friendly lot!
The rice was actually really yummy, beef sukiyaki just has so much flavour that it's hard not to like. I even took a sneaky photo of this bonus dish!
Then we had a conversation where I said where I was from and that I'd had an excellent holiday in New York, and just had a wonderful chat overall. I said that I found New Yorkers to be pretty nice, and they seemed impressed at that! I guess the nice ones are self conscious about how they're perceived?
Well, now I was really full and ready for the bill. And it came in exactly on target, at 400USD including tip. I am awesome! And expensive. Hahahahahaha. What an amazing meal. Once again, I've experienced an amazing meal at a bar, instead of a dining room, and it was the people that made it such a memorable meal. I really should opt for bar seating more often (I already do), because there's so much more to foodie adventures than just eating food!
Hooray for fun dining experiences!