There are three different writing systems in Japan: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are phonograms, and rather easy to learn because Japanese is phonetically limited. Hiragana and katakana are used to represent the exact same sounds, but they look different. Why have two different writing systems if they have the same sound? Katakana is usually used for foreign words. Kanji are ideograms and have several different pronunciations. You need to know about 2,000 kanji to read a newspaper in Japan. I used romaji (Japanese written using the English alphabet) in this trip report, and tried to be as accurate as possible, with the exception of proper nouns that are well known in English. Those are intentionally misrepresented if that's how we know them in the U.S. (e.g., Osaka is really Oosaka and Kyoto is really Kyouto).
I was trying to get to Japan as cheaply as possible, unfortunately that meant connecting through Dallas. It was the wrong direction and meant extra flight time, but at least the extra miles were useful for frequent flier miles. Thirteen hours seemed like an excessive flight time, but it was only an hour longer (if my memory serves me right) than my first trip to Japan.
I had a couple of hours at the Dallas airport and I was hungry so I looked for something good to eat in the terminal. There was an Irish pub that served food so I gave them a shot. I had a breakfast sandwich with bangers [sausage] and eggs that wasn't too bad.
On the flight they had a lunch choice of sukiyaki or pork. I tried the pork because I wasn't really hungry so I figured I didn't have anything to lose. The pork was as hard as a hockey puck and about as tasty. Needless to say I didn't finish it. The other food I had on the flight wasn't as bad, but coach food is always dodgy.
I read a book and watched "Last Holiday" to pass the time on the flight. I wanted to see "Last Holiday" in theaters, but never made it so I was happy. It was a funny movie that was very food oriented, but it didn't have any re-watch value for me. I was crawling the walls after only four hours in flight so 13 hours was almost like torture to me. I made up my mind that was the last flight I take to Japan for a very long time. [That decision only lasted a week after I got back from Japan.]
I wanted to keep my luggage light so I only packed what I could fit into a carry on bag and a backpack. That amounted to five days worth of cloths for a fourteen day trip, but Steve had a washing machine so it seemed worth not rolling a huge bag around. I love the advantages of traveling during the off season, but the one great advantage to traveling during nice weather is you don't need to pack bulky cold weather clothes.
Since I didn't have to pick up any bags, and knew in advance to fill out the entry card, I breezed through customs. I didn't see Steve so I thought maybe he was at the other exit. I walked back and forth between the two exits, but Steve was nowhere to be found so I tried not to feel abandoned in a foreign country in addition to being sweaty because there wasn't any circulation in the Kansai Airport making it uncomfortably warm.
I arrived in Japan during Golden Week (an almost solid week of holidays that turns Japan into a ghost town) so I was worried that the ATMs were closed because their operating hours mirror bank business hours. I had a couple hundred dollars on me that I exchanged for yen at a currency exchange in Dallas to tide me over until I could hit an open ATM in Japan. It was the worst conversion rate I've ever paid. I hate getting ripped off so I was already annoyed, only find that the currency exchanges in Japan offered a much better conversion rate, and were open. As were the ATMs. Apparently Golden Week doesn't apply to the airport. I hit an ATM for the rest of the cash I expected to use on the trip.
Steve had given me his cell phone number and I had looked up directions for making calls in Japan prior to my arrival. The directions weren't quite correct so it took me a few minutes to figure out how to call him. I got ahold of Steve and he was late because he forgot the trains were on their holiday schedules and he was still about 20 minutes from the airport.
Once he showed up we took the limo bus to the Moriguchi station and caught up with each other (we don't email each other as often as we should). Once at Moriguchi I bought a K-Card so I wouldn't have to calculate train fares the rest of the trip. From Moriguchi we took the train to the Neyagawashi station, one of the two stations close to Steve's apartment.
On the way to Steve's apartment we stopped at a cafeteria to have dinner with Steve's friends Roy and Bill (and Bill's girlfriend). I'm not a fan of cafeterias so I was surprised that there were a few things that looked good to me. I got garlic chicken, a korokke [potato croquette], macaroni salad, and pickled daikon [radish]. The chicken was cold and only ok with very little garlic flavor. The korokke was still warm, crispy, and there was a little meat in the filling. I love korokke and this one didn't disappoint. The macaroni salad was macaroni and pickles in mayonnaise, which was bland, but I really liked it. Mayonnaise is one of the more unexpected ubiquitous Japanese condiments and I was happy to taste it again. That feeling would quickly pass. I like my daikon to have a firm crunch, which this one didn't, but it had a mild sweet flavor that was pretty good.
I didn't expect my first meal in Japan to be at a cafeteria, but it wasn't bad at all.
After dinner everybody went to Steve's apartment. It was a mile or more from the Neyagawashi station, which was a long way to roll my bag on a warm, humid night.
Steve showed me his cell phone on the way back to his place because he could watch tv on it. That was cool, but it was also very thick for a cell phone. Bill's cell phone could video conference and his was just as thick as Steve's.
Steve's apartment was on the third floor of a small building that used to be a Century 21 real estate office. How could I tell it was a Century 21 office you might ask? Because the building was painted yellow and it still said Century 21 on the side. The apartment was spacious and had real hardwood floors, and an upstairs loft sort of thing that was a room with a door. The bathroom, a retrofit job, was a metal cube with a toilet, bathtub/shower, and sink. It was small, but I found it a lot more convenient than the separate rooms for shower, toilet, and basin that seem popular in Japanese homes.
Bill brought some beer so we all drank and played a game called Dragon Slayer that had a small plastic sword controller that you slashed at the screen. We never actually played the game, but a couple of the mini games that were addictive. We all stayed up past midnight, which is before my normal bedtime, but I was very tired because I hadn't slept since I woke up to leave for Japan.
I woke up and my right shoulder was sore from the Dragon Slayer game. Roy stayed at Steve's so it took a while for everyone to get showered because Steve's shower drained slowly. The one problem with the prefab bathroom was the tub's drainpipe was narrow and easily clogged.
We watched a little tv before we left Steve's apartment, and I saw an anime called "Prince of Tennis". It's about a group of tennis players who have killer serves and stuff. They even had a live action movie coming out! My favorite scene from the show was one of the serves that flew up through the atmosphere, became a giant asteroid, circled the solar system, and crashed into Earth causing the extinction of the dinosaurs. How could you not be impressed by something like that? Ice Age smash! If you think that's cheesy then you should've seen the football themed anime "Eyeshield 21".
Steve, Roy, and I took the train to the Yodoyabashi station and the subway to Umeda. The trains were a little crowded when we were on and there was some girl standing next to us that Steve and Roy were talking about. I figured she knew enough English to know what they were saying. She might have because she smiled at Steve on the way off the train so Steve went to talk to her. Roy and I kicked back while Steve got her number/email address.
We were headed towards Curry House CoCo Ichibanya (Coco Ichi for short) for lunch when we saw a swap meet by the Osaka city courthouse. They had the usual swap meet stuff (used stuff), and lots of food booths. Some of them smelled really good, and Steve was tempted by the ¥100 okonomiyaki [a hearty savory pancake sort of thing], but we held out for Coco Ichi.
The Coco Ichi was less than five minutes from the swap meet. It was tiny and there was only seating for about six at the bar. I was shocked that such a minuscule Coco Ichi existed, but then we were led upstairs to some tables on the second floor. There were three stories total.
I got a vegetable salad, a kokorokke, and the chicken katsu curry (heat level 2). The salad consisted of iceberg lettuce, corn, and cucumbers (the small Japanese ones) with some sort of dressing that looked mustard based, but didn't have any flavor other than creamy. It was very tasty though.
I love korokke so I was looking forward to trying the kokorokke, Coco Ichi's curry stuffed korokke. It was long, slender, and very crispy like McDonald's hash browns, but it didn't taste like potatoes. I ordered the kokorokke spicy, but there wasn't any heat to the curry filling. It was ok at best, and I had to dip it in my curry to make it enjoyable.
Japanese curry was the food I missed most from my last trip to Japan so I couldn't wait for the chicken katsu curry. The chicken katsu was crispy and pretty good and the curry had a gradual heat that really hit me after three spoonfuls. It was a highly enjoyable lunch, but to me it wasn't as good as the Coco Ichi in Hirakatashi.
I wanted to get some Cuban cigars while in Japan (no embargo there) so before my trip I looked up the locations of a couple cigar shops in Umeda. We found one of them, Cigar Club, in an upscale mall that looked too expensive for me to shop at. There were three people working in a shop that was small enough to be filled by all six of us. I was disappointed in their selection and the cigars were very expensive (like twice what they are in Europe). I still bought four anyway because cigar shops are rare in Japan so it was possible that I wouldn't see another one all trip.
Roy wanted to find a bookstore with English books so we found one Steve knew about. I got a photography book called "Tokyo Damon" with pictures of Tokyo at night. Some of the pictures were pretty damn cool.
We left the bookstore to find an arcade. We went to one that had a game where you throw balls at the screen to break things or make things explode. It was a lot of fun and a work out of sorts. We also played one of my old favorites, Taiko no Tatsujin [Taiko Drum Master]. I'm not very good at the game, hitting the taiko with the sticks at the correct time requires a certain amount of hand-eye coordination, but it was still fun. After a couple of plays it also proved to be a better work out than expected. Too bad I got a couple of blisters on my hand from one of the sticks. Steve demonstrated his mastery of UFO catchers [crane games that scoop up prizes] and won a few things.
All that activity got me thirsty so we went to find a soda vending machine. Normally they're everywhere, but Umeda must be too nice for them. We eventually found one that sold everything for ¥100, included half liter bottles of Snoopy Orange soda. I got one because it was the biggest bottle in the machine, and it was actually very refreshing.
Roy had to go somewhere leaving Steve and I on our own. We went to a couple of other arcades where I found my favorite arcade game from my last Japan trip, Gundam Z DX. There was also a new Gundam game, Gundam Seed Federation vs. Z.A.F.T., but it was pretty hard and not as much fun.
Eventually we returned home to the Korien station (the other station by Steve's place) because there was an arcade there with ¥50 games. Naturally we played more Gundam Z DX.
It was late, but Kenzou Ramen, Steve's favorite ramen place, was open. I had a bowl of miso ramen with lots of firm noodles, sliced green onion, sesame seeds, and a slice of fatty roast pork. The pork wasn't salted so it was bland and the fat didn't taste good. The broth, while good with the noodles and the green onion, didn't taste good by itself. My ramen was decent, but not as good as I hoped.
Steve had their special ramen with a hard boiled egg and lots of pork. The broth of his soup was different, but I didn't think it tasted any better than my miso broth. Steve hates eggs so he gave me his hard boiled egg. That's when I found out it was really a soft boiled egg. There's nothing like unwittingly biting into a raw egg yolk.
The best part of the meal was actually when some scraggly yakuza [Japanese gangster] walked in with his wife and child. He looked like he was drunk and possibly homeless so it was funny watching our waiter be overly nice to him.
On the way back to Steve's place he showed me "porn corner", a little enclosed area just around the corner from his place with about a dozen porn vending machines. Most of them had dvds, but some had video tapes, toys, or costumes. I was trying to figure out why one particular dvd cost ¥5,000 while the usual price was ¥2,000 so Steve read the description for it. It said that particular dvd was out of publication and had 12 to 15 year old girls on it. I didn't think that was possible because even Japan, home of the young girl photo book, has child porn laws. It made me feel dirty just looking at it.
I woke up and my shoulders were very sore. I didn't expect it, but it was because I wore my backpack all day the day before with my full camera bag in it. I decided that I only needed to carry my camera from then on.
I watched some Japanese tv and it was still boring. The worst of the shows were the ones where they just read stories from the newspaper. How much more unoriginal can you get? I bet there's probably a newspaper that prints articles recapping those shows somewhere.
The strangest thing I noticed about Japanese tv was that they subtitled practically everything said, even when it's in Japanese. Chotto hen desu ne [Kind of strange isn't it?]. One of the things I did like about Japanese tv was when the news casters bowed to the television audience after they were done reading the news.
I found out that "Naruto" (an anime about teenage ninjas that I'd been hooked on) came on Wednesday nights at exactly 7:27. I have no idea why the Japanese don't schedule their shows on the half hour or hour since that would be easier for people who watch those shows.
I didn't really pay attention to commercials, but my favorite commercial was for C.C. Lemon, a lemon flavored soda with lots of vitamin C in it. It featured a strange looking foreign guy wearing a yellow shirt and short shorts helping this family do things. After he helped them they would thank him saying, "Sankyu Shi Shi Remon [Thank you C.C. Lemon]" and he'd have a chagrinned look on his face. (Wow, I found the commercial on YouTube.) The most unexpected commercials were for skin whiteners and "brighteners".
I didn't have anything better to do so I used my laptop to look for wireless networks. There were two in the area, but both were secured. I tried to guess the WEP keys, but didn't have any luck. I'd only been without an internet connection for a couple of days, but I missed it.
We headed out to lunch, but we were both too starved to wait until we got to the restaurant so we stopped at a Lawson, a convenience store, to pick something up. I got a red bean ice cream bar that had whole red beans in the ice cream. It wasn't sweet so it was more like a food than a dessert. It didn't taste bad, but I didn't like the bean skins getting caught in my teeth.
Rina, a friend of Steve's, invited him to her family's restaurant. Steve wasn't sure he wanted to eat there, but I thought a personal invitation could make for a better than typical experience. We took the train to the Kyoubashi station where we picked up a JR train that went to the Hoshida [star field] station. It was hot, and the JR train was equipped with fans (and possibly air conditioning), but they weren't turned on. I knew there was a reason I didn't like JR trains.
It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere when we exited the Hoshida station. The restaurant, named Hoshi no Mori [forest of stars], was just down the street from the station, but the area seemed small enough that everything was just down the street from the station.
We sat in one of the restaurant's traditional private rooms complete with tatami mats on the floor and a low table in the center. It felt odd taking up the entire room by ourselves. Rina had already eaten lunch, but she kicked back in the room chatting with us. Her English was very good. The restaurant's menu was like eight pages long so when Rina asked what we wanted we just asked her what was good. She told us everything. That was useful. She asked if we liked sushi, to which we answered yes. She ordered us some nigiri sushi [a mound of sushi rice with something laid on top of it] and we were brought a small bowl of rice with bamboo shoots and a soup with somen [thin noodles] and seaweed. The rice wasn't bad and the soup had a strange flavor that I didn't like. It was my first time having somen, the thin version of udon, and I was disappointed to find their flavor as thin as the noodles.
We thought we were getting a couple of pieces of nigiri sushi, but a platter of ten showed up for each of us. The sushi was kanpachi [young yellowtail], sayori [halfbeak, a white fish], sake [salmon], ika [squid], maguro [tuna], unagi [fresh water eel], hotaru ika [firefly squid], ebi [shrimp], tai [red snapper], and tako [octopus]. I was happy to try some things I'd never had before, but also disappointed to see a few of my least favorite sushi items. Oh well, nothing to do but eat.
I'd never had kanpachi before, and despite not liking the older fish hamachi, I found the kanpachi quite tasty. I'd never had sayori before either, and also found it tasty. The sake was fatty giving it a buttery finish, but it wasn't as good as the fatty sake I had at Shinbay. The maguro was only ok. I hate raw shrimp, but the shrimp only looked raw even though it was actually cooked, and had a pleasant mild flavor.
Unagi is normally my favorite sushi item, but this unagi was very firm in a way that made it only ok. I've never liked raw squid and I didn't like this one either; it was very thick and chewy without much flavor making it was my least favorite item.
I'd never heard of firefly squid much less seen one before so the two tiny whole firefly squid on top of sushi rice was intimidating. I wasn't hot on the idea of eating two squid whole, but it was on my plate. The squid didn't taste bad, but their guts would've been if the wasabi didn't kick in at just the right time. I didn't mind the squid, but Steve didn't get saved by the wasabi so he had to choke it down.
I saved what I thought would be the best and worst of the sushi until last. I thought the tai would be best, but it was stringy so I didn't care for it. Okaasan's tai was great the first time I was in Japan, but I haven't had another I've liked since. The tako was very chewy without much flavor, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the ika.
Rina's father is the restaurant's cook, and he did a great job with the nigiri sushi; the wasabi was almost always in the right proportion, a very rare thing in my opinion, and the sushi rice had an excellent flavor so even the more tasteless sushi items were enjoyable. I was impressed.
When we went to pay the bill we found out they only charged us ¥1,000! That was a serious discount.
Before we left Rina's mom said I looked like some famous basketball player!? Hopefully an incredibly handsome one.
Steve asked Rina if she knew of anything going on in the area, and she remembered that there was a matsuri at a small town two or three train stops back the way we came. That sounded good to us so Rina rode the train with us to the festival. Just outside of the train station there were food and game booths lining the path from the station all the way up to some mountain temple. Steve and I were the only foreigners we saw around
We looked at all the booths on the way to the temple, but didn't get anything until we came back down. Steve got some baby castellas [little balls of somewhat sweet bread] that were ok. I got some sort of Okinawa "donut" which were balls of deep fried batter. They were sort of sweet and would have been great with some sugar on top, but that's typical of Japanese sweets.
Steve and I played a number picking game (you pick a folded piece of paper with a number in it that might correspond to a prize) at one of the booths, and Steve won a little Totoro purse (I wonder what he did with it), but I didn't win anything.
When we were walking around some Japanese guy at one of the booths said to me, "Hey, you're not from around here. You're tall!" It was ironic because he was obviously very tall even though he was sitting down.
While we were standing at the station trying to figure out what to do afterwards, there were a lot of trampy looking girls (some in the newest trampy style wearing cowboy boots). I was surprised there were so many for such a small place.
We left whatever town we were in and went to Kyoubashi. We walked around randomly, but I decided to find a cigar shop. We stopped at a tobacco shop, but they didn't sell cigars. The lady working there was nice enough to tell us where there was a cigar shop though. It was easy to find, but really small so I wasn't confident of their selection. Naturally I looked anyway. They didn't have anything I wanted, but they asked if I was looking for anything specific. The only thing that came to mind was my favorite cigar, the Cohiba Edition Limitada 2001 "Pirimide", and the guy knew exactly what I wanted. He did a little rooting around and pulled out a box of them. It cost twice as much as they normally cost, but I would've felt bad making him dig the box out and not buy anything. Cigars really were too damn expensive in Japan and I decided that was the last one I was going to buy.
Rina had to go somewhere so Steve and I walked around Kyoubashi for a while. There were a few working girls wandering around, and some of them were even hot.
We were getting pretty hungry and spent some time looking around for a good restaurant. The best smelling restaurants were either okonomiyaki or yakiniku [Korean barbecue] places so we went with the best smelling yakiniku place we found, which was pretty close to the Kyoubashi station. The restaurant was three stories tall and we were seated on the second floor.
Their menu had plenty of meats to choose from and a lot of upgraded meat options. Normally I don't go for "upgraded" meat, but they had some pictures on the menu and the deluxe roast looked unbelievably marbled. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. I was planning on treating Steve to a dinner for letting me stay with him, and this looked like the dinner to treat him because I wanted to go all out on the upgraded meats. We got the deluxe rousu [rib eye], zo karubi [upgraded kalbi], mino miso [tripe w/miso], zo harami shio [upgraded skirt steak w/salt], and tontoro shio [pork fat w/salt]. Raw cabbage comes with the barbecue so didn't have to order it, but wanting to get another vegetable I also got oi kimchi [marinated cucumbers].
Our platter of meat arrived and the quality of it probably can't be duplicated anywhere outside Japan. The deluxe rib eye had wide ribbons of fat running through it like the beef equivalent of dandara toro [fatty tuna]. The upgraded kalbi was actually even fattier and very finely marbled. I guessed the fat to meat ratio was 60:40 while Steve guessed 70:30. I wish I took a picture of the meat so I could show other people what quality Japanese beef looks like. Just because beef comes from Wagyu cows ("American Kobe beef") doesn't mean it's comparable to Japanese beef, and it's obvious when you see the two. The harami, of course, was pretty fatty too.
The deluxe rib eye tasted like I was drinking fat, not in a bad way, but it was too much fat for me. I cooked it a little longer to render more of the fat, but then one of the guys working there said I was cooking it too much. The kalbi was Steve's favorite. I thought it was good, but I preferred the salted harami (which was my favorite of the beef).
The tontoro was sliced pork with a thick layer of fat on it. The pork was so tasty with the crispy fat and salt. One of the guys who worked there suggested squirting it with lemon, and it was even better! I didn't have a clear cut favorite item, but if I had to choose one it would probably be the tontoro. The mino was pure fat marinated in a dark miso, which gave it a good flavor, but I would've liked it better with some heat to it.
I was happy with the raw cabbage because as a raw vegetable it helped balance out all the meat fat. The cucumber kim chi had a very good flavor and was even spicy hot! I was extremely happy with it.
One of the things I loved about the yakiniku I had the last time I was in Japan was how amazingly hot and flavorful the marinades were so I was disappointed that none of the meats had any heat to them. The upgraded meats were great, but we ordered too many of them. Next time I have yakiniku I'll know not to overdo them and only get one or two.
We left Kyoubashi for Steve's place and it was drizzling when left the Neyagawashi station. We stopped at an internet cafe by the station so I could find the default password for a Warpstar wireless router (which was what both wireless networks at Steve's apartment were using) while Steve checked his email. The internet cafe had free fountain drinks and manga in addition to computers. I tried the Suntory Pop Melon which tasted like pure sugar and water. The cafe was a little smokey, but didn't have the visible layer of smoke that Steve said he's seen there on a bad day. Unfortunately I found out there isn't a default password for a Warpstar router, but Steve found a program to crack WEP keys. Nice.
It was raining hard when we got out of the internet cafe, and we didn't have umbrellas so we got pretty wet until Steve managed to find one halfway back to his place.
Apparently the rain never stopped because when I woke up it was still raining. I was starving so we stopped at Kobeya Bakery in the Neyagawashi station before we went to lunch. I picked up a sweet potato pie and a chocolate stuffed croissant. The sweet potato pie was hardly sweet, but the pastry was very flaky and buttery, and the sweet potato filling was quite tasty. My only complaint was that it could've used more black sesame seeds on top, which reminded me that this was the same bakery that I picked up the great ube [purple potato] pastry with black sesame seeds I had the first time I was in Japan. They didn't make those ube pastries anymore, but I decided I'd have to eat quite a few of the sweet potato pies before I left Japan. I'm not a big fan of chocolate stuffed croissants, but Lynn loves them so I tried one just for her. Neither the chocolate or the croissant was very good.
We went to the Namba station to meet Steve's friend Risa, and her sister Momoko, for lunch. We went to Sant Angelo because Risa said it was good. We got a "pair set", which came with a salad, choice of pasta, choice of pizza, gelato, and an after dinner drink. It was a lot of food, but it wasn't expensive.
The salad course consisted of mixed greens, potato salad, and cold chicken. The mixed greens were really good because of the vinaigrette, but the other items didn't fare as well. The potato salad had no flavor to it whatsoever, and the chicken didn't taste good, but I don't really like cold chicken anyway.
The pasta course was some kind of pasta with "bacon" (probably pancetta) and broccoli. The dish didn't have a good flavor, but it was a large serving so I forced myself to eat it all so I didn't get hungry too soon afterwards.
I didn't realize that the reason it was called a pair set was because two people had to order it. The pizza was split between what I ordered and what Steve ordered. I had a margarita pizza that had a tasty, crispy crust, and tomato sauce that was pretty good too, but the cheese tasted so cheap that I didn't like the pizza because of it. One of the girls had a pizza that was described as "left overs" so I didn't get it, but I got to try a piece of it. It had pumpkin, olives, yellow bell pepper, and fresh arugula. Despite the odd ingredients it was quite tasty. Even the cheese on her pizza tasted better! Who would have expected something named left overs to taste so good?
Dessert was a gelato that tasted like a combination of maple and coffee. The gelato was smooth and very creamy, and the flavor combination was great. If only the rest of the meal were that good. My after dinner drink was iced tea, which actually had a strong tea flavor that I liked.
Overall I didn't like lunch, but Steve pointed out that it was cheap. I'd rather have good than cheap. I didn't have any fun at lunch because Risa and Momoko only spoke Japanese and Steve didn't translate much.
We didn't have anything planned so we walked around Namba with the girls. We went to some mall and visited a shochu [a distilled alcoholic drink] shop that gave out free samples. The samples weren't supposed to be that big according to the sign by the sample cart, but following the lead of some Japanese guy I poured myself about half a shot. Anything less and I doubt you'd be able to taste it anyway. I only took one sample because the one I tried had a finish like nail polish remover. Steve only had one sample too because his appeared to taste even worse.
We then went to Yamada Denki, an electronics store that has a huge five story building in Namba. I'm not into electronics, but they had a large Gundam section with toys and models. The Gundam models are snap together and the parts are precolored so they didn't look like they'd require much effort. One of the Master Grade models (a MS-07B-3 Gouf Custom) was so cool that I had to get it even though I don't like models. (There are about three levels of Gundam models: High Grade, Master Grade, and Perfect Grade. The most obvious difference between them is the High Grade are 1/144 scale, the Master Grade are 1/100 scale, and the Perfect Grade are 1/60 scale.)
After the hour or more we spent in the Gundam section we walked through the digital camera section. There was an employee about every three paces! With more people working on that floor than customers I was amazed their prices weren't higher.
We eventually left Yamada Denki and went to an arcade. They had a racing game called Mario Kart Grand Prix, and since I love Mario Kart on Nintendo it was no surprise I loved the game arcade version. You could make a card that tracked your game stats, like which tracks you beat, which weapons you unlocked, and your versus record. It was a popular feature because there were a few games that did it including a "Dragonball Z" fighting game. I didn't want a card at the first arcade we played the game because it cost ¥300 to make one, but we found a place that did it for ¥100 so we both got one.
Steve raved about some mini waffles a girl got him one time so we hit a mini waffle stand. It was pretty busy and they had about eight different waffles to choose from. I got the standard syrup one and an almond one. The waffles were fresh, but they were only good which baffled Steve. He figured they might taste better after sitting overnight, and oddly enough they did.
The girls left so Steve and I just walked around looking at video games and UFO catchers. We found an arcade that had Gundam DX for only ¥50. At least the sign on the machine said Gundam DX, but there were twice as many Gundam to choose from. I later found out that the game was really Gundam Z DX A.E.U.G. vs. Titans. We played the game at least an hour trying out the different Gundam and learning how to play better.
Warning, this is about to get geekier the normal. I actually got decent at the game and even found a couple of favorite Gundam, the Titan Gaplant because of its two swords and the Zeon Gelgoog because of the shield on its back. The shield on the back was good on space missions because the bad guys were always shooting me in the back. Multiple swords come in handy because all the guns have limited ammunition/charges so you're constantly resorting to melee weapons. It only took two to three hits from a melee weapon to knock an enemy down, which always sucked because you couldn't hit them while they were on the ground. The hit rule only applied to one weapon though so with two weapons you could get in two additional hits for quicker kills.
While we were playing some Japanese guy got in on our game and destroyed us. He was much better than decent. Afterwards he acted friendly, but jumping in on someone else's game without asking is rude. Maybe arcade etiquette is different in Japan?
It was about nine when we finished at the arcade and we were starving. I wanted to find an okonomiyaki place, and as luck would have it Steve knew of a good one only a few shops away.
We went to Okonomiyaki Yukari and were seated at a table with a large griddle in the center of it to make our okonomiyaki. We got an Indian okonomiyaki (curry flavor okonomiyaki with hot dogs) and a formage okonomiyaki (cheese). I wanted some vegetables so I got a daikon salad. I thought it would be greens with daikon on top, but it was just a bowl full of julienned daikon. It had a tasty vinaigrette on it so I didn't mind.
Steve wasn't as confident of his okonomiyaki making skills as he was in his UFO catcher mastery so he had the waiter make the okonomiyaki for us. The waiter mixed the dry ingredients in a bowl, then mixed in the wet ingredients, poured the thick mixture onto the griddle, and pushed in the edges with a spatula. It didn't look too difficult to me so I decided to make my own okonomiyaki next time.
The Indian okonomiyaki surprised me with some heat and the fact that the pieces of hot dog were quite tasty in it. I liked it topped with tonkatsu sauce and, *gasp*, mayonnaise. Despite the five cheeses, including a slice of processed cheese, in the formage okonomiyaki it was bland. I had to throw a lot of tonkatsu sauce on it, but it was Steve's favorite.
Overall it was a very good meal, and I'd return to Okonomiyaki Yukari. I'd probably try the seafood okonomiyaki (including scallops, shrimp, squid, and crab) next time.
We returned home and rented a couple of movies from Tsutaya that we didn't watch that night. While in Tsutaya there was a really hot chick in a tight black dress looking for a movie, which caused us to loiter. We tried to figure out her story because she seemed like she was pained because she couldn't find what she was looking for. Steve's guess was she had a request from a customer.
We woke up and watched the "Cutie Honey" movie Steve rented the night before. It was based on a cartoon, but the movie was live action. It was cool for about the first 10 minutes with all the cartoon style fighting, but it got a little boring after that. At least the chick playing Cutie Honey, Eriko Sato, was hot.
I tried the WEP key cracker with high hopes, but the program was missing a dll so it wouldn't work. I'd have to make another trip to the internet cafe to get everything I needed for it. Living without a constant internet connection irritated me.
I felt the need to start eating cheap because I had already blown through $350 so we went back to the cafeteria for lunch. This time I had the ni saba [some sort of mackerel], spinach, and two korokke. The korokke were once again tasty. The spinach had tofu in it and wasn't bad. The fish was tender and had an excellent flavor from its sweet soy based sauce. I was actually happy with lunch.
When we finished with lunch an older guy asked Steve if he could practice his English with him for a while. The old guy was retired and now bored off of his ass. He was pretty cool though and his English wasn't bad.
JJ Club was a club we discovered the last time I was in Japan that carried video games, among other things, that charged a flat fee of ¥100 for every fifteen minutes of unlimited play. I wanted some JJ Club action, but Steve told me the one we used to go to by the Neyagawashi station had closed. Steve saw one from the train while we were on our way to Hoshi no Mori (that restaurant in the middle of nowhere) so we decided to find it. It was a cloudless, humid, and blazing hot so it wasn't the best day to find someplace by walking in its general direction. We walked pretty far without seemingly coming close to the JJ Club.
We didn't find the JJ Club, but we found a Yamada Denki instead. I couldn't pass up a new source of Gundam models/toys so we stopped to look. Their selection was suprisingly good, but they were more expensive than the one in Namba.
After we left Yamada Denki Steve decided just to find the nearest JR station so we could take the train to the JJ Club. We ended up in a rural feeling urban area. Steve asked directions and we were pointed in the direction that took us along a canal. I've heard that rivers in Japan tend to have a more manmade feel to them, but I'm pretty sure aluminum walls and a concrete bed qualifies as a canal in any country. While we were walking some Japanese lady called us over to look at a huge carp in the canal. There looked to be about four inches of water in the canal and the carp was so big that the water didn't completely cover it and when it swished around it moved so much water that it sounded like someone splashing around.
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Hours after we started we found a JR train station and rode to the JJ Club. It was a lot farther than we thought it would be (over three miles). When we left the Suminodou station we walked past a group of high school girls, or as Steve referred to them, slutty high school girls. I asked him what differentiated a high school girl from a slutty high school girl and he basically said you know them when you see them, but wearing poofy socks in hot weather was a good tip off. Steve jokingly said he'd have to come back some other time. After we walked past them one or two of the girls yelled at us in English. I told Steve he had his opening. We kept walking away when one of them yelled, "I love you." Steve said he'd definitely have to come back.
It didn't take much to find the JJ Club, but my membership had expired so I had to pay for a new one, and the price went up ¥5 to ¥105 every 15 minutes. *grumble* This JJ Club looked very ghetto, but they did have a small indoor track for two mini bikes, which the one in Neyagawashi never had. They also had manga, computers with internet access, bowling, and billiards, but no Gundam games.
I found the samurai game with the sword hilt you wave around that I played in Vegas, but it got really old after five minutes. If I actually payed ¥100 a game it probably would've cost me ¥2,000 so I guess JJ Club was a good deal. Of course if I was paying for it I wouldn't have played the game that much. Steve and I played Taiko no Tatsujin, but I sucked at it. I think my drum was defective. A couple of the games we wanted to play didn't work, and a couple more crashed while we were playing them (once again keeping us from finishing House of the Dead 2).
Before we left we had to try the mini bikes. The handle bars on my bike were swept back which meant I could only turn about 10 degrees before the handle bars hit my knee. I almost hurt myself. Multiple times. The first time I almost twisted my ankle off completely I thought about how much my visit to Japan would suck if I couldn't walk. It wasn't a pleasant thought. Steve's bike had straight handle bars so we traded bikes and I had a lot more fun (and a lot less potential for serious self maiming).
I didn't like that location enough to not bother returning to it unless we were bowling (in which case it was a good deal).
It was late for dinner when we left JJ Club so I didn't want to go far for food. There was a Lotteria, a fast food burger shop, in the train station looked good enough for a quick meal. I got a deluxe burger and fries. The fries were crispy, salty, and decent serving size too. I couldn't really ask for more. The burger patty was large, but thin, and it was just an ok burger. Basically it was typical fast food.
Steve went off with one of his girls so I was on my own for the day, although I didn't know it at the time. I couldn't figure out what I wanted to eat so I didn't do anything for the longest time (which also happens to me at home when I don't know what I want to eat). I knew I wasn't in the mood for any of the restaurants on the way to the Neyagawashi station so I decided to head towards the Korien station for some food and some ¥50 Gundam. I had only been to Korien once before, at night, heading from there instead of going to there so I wasn't able to find it.
Since I was starving, and I didn't want to go to the Neyagawashi station just to take it to the Korien station, I stopped at a 7-11 to pick up some food. I got a sandwich and an onigiri [rice ball] with all sorts of stuff in it including seaweed, egg, and mushrooms. The onigiri was quite tasty. I got the sandwich because it had meat and vegetables in it so I didn't read the name until after I ate it. I had to laugh when I read that it was an "American Club". I wondered if the cashier found it amusing when I bought the sandwich. The sandwich had ham, chicken, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, and mustard. It was better than most club sandwiches I've had in America because the chicken was roasted, and not sliced too thin. That was pretty good eating for a convenience store.
I'm not much of a solo traveler so I knew being by myself was going to be a challenge. I'll do practically anything with company, but by myself I'm not very motivated to do anything. I was hoping I'd work through that this trip since I knew about half my stay would be on my own, but that didn't happen Tuesday. Instead I took a nap after eating lunch, watched sumo, and smoked one of my cigars after that. Steve was scheduled to work Wednesday through Saturday so I hoped that Wednesday I'd wake up and just head to Kyoto (the only place in the area that interested me as a tourist).
Steve and Rina showed up while I was smoking a cigar, and he fixed one of his bikes so we could both ride to the places nearby. Steve showed me how to use the washing machine so I did a load of laundry. After that was taken care of the three of us headed to dinner. Steve and I had to walk the bikes since Rina didn't like the idea of riding on the back of Steve's bike.
The yakiniku place we ate at a few days earlier was very good, but I didn't find it satisfying because none of the marinades were hot. I knew the yakiniku place just down the street from the Neyagawashi station believed in heat so we went there, but they were on vacation. They were on the corner of a covered mall area which looked like a promising spot for another restaurant, but most of the places were already closed. The only place open was a soba restaurant, which sounded good in addition to being the only option.
The restaurant was a small family place that looked like they were about 20 minutes from closing, but they still let us order. I had tempura udon, and the tempura shrimp were quite tasty. The first one was still somewhat crispy, but the second one was soggy by the time I finished the first. I still don't understand the logic behind putting crispy tempura in soup to get soggy. The udon wasn't bad either, and once again I liked everything in the soup, but didn't actually care for the broth. It was a good dinner though.
While we were eating dinner Rina asked if I liked tempura, and I said I did. She said the next time we visit her family's restaurant I should try the tempura. It cost about $10 round trip so I wasn't sure it would be worth it.
The lady working at the restaurant said Steve and I looked like good, friendly foreigners. I wasn't sure what to make of that.
We bid goodnight to Rina, and we finally got to ride the bikes we'd been walking around. The bike I was riding must have been set to a high gear because it was difficult to peddle and so hard to get up hills I considered walking it up instead of riding.
We rode to the Korien station to play at the arcade with the ¥50 Gundam DX. We played for a long time, but I didn't like it as much as Gundam Z DX A.E.U.G. vs. Titans because I missed having twice as many Gundam to play with.
We hit the internet cafe afterwards so I could get all the extra dlls for the WEP key cracker, but the software didn't work on the laptop. So much for free internet access.
Apparently Wednesday is when the tv stations run their food programs, but it didn't make Japanese tv any less boring. It was raining so I wasn't motivated to get lunch much less visit Kyoto.
I was bored enough and hungry enough that I walked to the super market in Green City. None of the convenience stores carried my favorite Glico chocolate covered fried almonds so I hoped the super market did, but it was all the same Meiji and Lotte crap that the convenience stores carry.
I was surprised to see that the freezer section was much bigger than the last time I was in a Japanese super market. I spent a lot of time looking through the deli foods to hopefully pick out something tasty and filling for lunch. I got some korokke, "chicken steak", and some sort of hamburger. I also picked up some snacks and dinner fixings (marinated kalbi and a yellow bell pepper). Produce is supposed to be very expensive in Japan, but the bell pepper only cost me ¥200, which is very close to the $2 for orange bell peppers (the most expensive of the colored bell peppers) in Phoenix. There are probably other outrageously priced produce, but I only looked at the bell peppers.
I'm hooked on korokke because they're addictive and really good almost everywhere I've had them in Japan. I'm dumbfounded that almost no one makes them in Phoenix. The supermarket ones were pretty good too. The chicken steak was a good looking piece of grilled chicken with some sort of glaze on it, but I didn't like the way the chicken tasted. It wasn't the glaze, but the flavor of the chicken itself. I don't think I like Japanese chicken. I thought the hamburger was made out of some sort of seafood when I bought it, but it was written in kanji so I didn't know what kind of seafood. The receipt had most of the items displayed in easy to read katakana so I discovered that I really got a "tofu hamburger". I really would've preferred fish. The burger wasn't bad, but it was disappointing after expecting meat.
I didn't have anything better to do so I started putting my Gouf Gundam model together and watched some sumo. Later I watched some Naruto. I was hooked on the model, but when I had starved enough I was finally able to tear myself away from it to make dinner. I pan fried the kalbi, and added sliced bell pepper to it to make it a little healthier. The kalbi smelled foul when it was cooking so I hoped it wasn't liver (you never know what the kanji on the package could say). I was scared to taste the kalbi, but to my relief it was pork. I wasn't happy with it though because the marinade was the sort of deep red that suggested heat, but it was sweet instead. I was dying for some spicy hot food.
When Steve came home I was still working on the Gundam model, which was quite complex for a snap together. He got jealous and wanted to work on a Gundam model of his own.
Steve wanted a Gundam model bad enough to get one first thing in the morning. We rode to Yamada Denki, but we came across a Joshin (an electronics store) along the way and stopped there instead. Steve bought some fairly cheap Gundam models so we didn't have to go to Yamada Denki. We also picked up apple pie pastries for breakfast from the grocery store next to Joshin. The apple pie had apples and custard baked in puff pastry. It wasn't as buttery as I like my pasty, but they were pretty good. We returned to Steve's place and Roy and Rina came over.
I showed Roy my uber cool Gouf and what did he say? "The gatling shield would be impractical because the gun is longer than the Gundam is tall." Once he mentioned it I saw the truth of it and suddenly my Gouf wasn't so cool any more. Screw you Roy.
We were all going to get some lunch at an okonomiyaki restaurant in the basement of Green City that was supposed to be good when Steve remembered that he was supposed to be at work in less than an hour. Roy and I went to Green City without Steve. Roy ate at McDonald's, but I tried the special okonomiyaki from the okonomiyaki place. It was a little bit of something for everybody because the okonomiyaki was topped with yakisoba, an omelet, plum sauce, and mayonnaise. If I knew there was so much crap on it I wouldn't have got it. The egg wasn't bad, but the mayonnaise on top of it disgusted me. Scraping the mayonnaise off didn't get rid of enough of its flavor so I only ate half of the egg. The yakisoba was only ok. The okonomiyaki was the best thing, but I decided I needed to stop going to Green City for food since I hardly had anything I liked there.
We looked at the toy section in the department store in Green City, and by the time we were done it was too late for me to head to Kyoto. Roy went back home and I finished my Gundam model and watched some tv. There was sumo on (a basho [sumo tournament] is fifteen days long in case you were wondering why there was always sumo on) and some challenge tv show that I liked. One of the challenges was to see if two separate people (a guy and a girl) could live on only ¥10,000 for a month. That was an interesting challenge because I spent four times that amount in less than a week. The guy had ¥288 left over while the girl had ¥299 left. So close. The next challenge was to see if two comedians could eat a whole (90kg) tuna in two weeks. I did the math, and they would each have to eat seven pounds of fish a day. They made it past the first day, but it was exhausting just watching them eat. I don't think it's possible for two people to eat that much meat for two weeks straight. Too bad I'll never find out if they succeeded.
Lunch was rather large so I didn't feel like getting dinner. I just ate cookies and the leftover tofu hamburger. Somehow the tofu hamburger tasted better the second day. Maybe it was made with mini waffles?
I got bored so I walked around Steve's apartment looking for open wireless networks and found one. The signal was extremely weak so I lost it immediately. I eventually found two spots that received the signal though, one upstairs by the window and another on the stairs outside. The one upstairs was indoors so that was my preferred spot. I had to have the laptop at chest height to receive the signal so I stacked a box on top of Steve's luggage, and that worked. Sometimes. It was a pain in the ass, but more convenient than going down to the station to the internet cafe, and it was free.
I used my new found internet connection to send email and look at the conversion rates of my credit cards. It turned out my credit card would've had the best conversion rate if they didn't charge a pointless conversion fee. With the fee my debit card was slightly better.
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Steve was supposed to go with me to Kyoto, but he still wasn't back by 11:30 from meeting one of his chicks so I left without him. I was pissed because if I knew he was going to be that late I would've left earlier. At least he drew me a map showing how to get to the Korien station.
The Korien station was much closer to Steve's apartment than the Neyagawashi station, but Steve didn't like going to Osaka from Korien because it cost an extra ¥20. That didn't seem like much given the time it could save, but Steve said he was looking at it long term. Naturally I did the math and the savings for five round trips every week of the year only amounted to ¥10,400 a year. That just didn't seem worth it to me.
It was about lunch time, but I knew if I got lunch by the Neyagawashi station I would put off going to Kyoto so I decided to pick up something by the Korien station. I got some snacks at Pompadour, a bakery in the Frest right outside of the Korien station, so I wouldn't starve. I got a pastry stuffed with custard and an apple pie. I was amazed that no one besides Kobeya made sweet potato pies. The custard pastry was only ok because the pastry wasn't buttery and the custard wasn't great. The apple pie was more like a traditional apple pie and was pretty decent.
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It took about an hour to get to Kyoto, which wasn't helped by the fact that I had to change trains at Hirakatashi. Once in Kyoto I got my bearings, and headed for the Nishiki food alley. Before I found it I found a long covered shopping area that I started to explore. Eventually I turned down a different covered alley, which turned out to be the Nishiki food alley. There were all sorts of food items for sale like seafood, vegetables, and pickles. One of the shops roasted their own tea, which gave off a tinny scent that I didn't find pleasant.
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After I was through looking at food it was time to eat some, but there wasn't anything that appealed to me. I walked into a toy store, and the people behind the counter acted like they'd never seen a foreigner before. I was surprised because that was the first time anyone just looked at me dumbfounded. Maybe they were intentionally being rude? Incidentally, Kyoto actually had quite a few British tourists.
As luck would have it the only arcade I found one had my favorite Gundam game (A.E.U.G. vs. Titans) for only ¥50 a play. I had fun, but I left without playing too much because I didn't want to spend all my time in Kyoto in an arcade.
As much as I was looking forward to Japanese food when I came to Japan I was surprised how quickly I got sick of it. I kept putting lunch off because nothing looked good until I got to the point that I was starving. I decided that if I had to eat Japanese food the best I could do was tonkatsu. I found Tonkatsu Wako in a subway station, and got the aji fry, a combination plate with two small tonkatsu, two shrimp katsu, one crab cream katsu, miso soup, some sort of custard soup, rice, pickles, and shredded cabbage.
The miso soup wasn't bad, but the clams in it tasted really fishy. The custard soup didn't have much flavor so it wasn't worth eating. The pickles (daikon and some green leafy vegetable) were a nice touch because I could always eat them between mouthfulls of bland rice. The shredded cabbage was excellent with the ponzu dressing on the table.
Normally I'm not crazy about shrimp katsu or tempura shrimp, but the shrimp were very tasty this trip. The tonkatsu wasn't bad, but the tonkatsu sauce was the really thin version that I don't like very much. The crab cream katsu was very creamy with a miniscule amount of crab, and it made me feel like I overdosed on oil.
I really enjoyed my lunch, but I was instantly disappointed with it when I found a Thai restaurant just around the corner from the tonkatsu place; I would've loved some spicy hot Thai food.
I walked to Higashi Honganji [East Hongan Temple] which was so large that it took scores of tatami mats to cover the floor. There were gold interior walls and an impressive alter, but it was too dark inside the temple to take a picture (no flash allowed).
After that I went to the JR Kyoto Station just to see The Cube, a large department store. It had the tallest staircase I'd ever seen in my life, like six stories tall. The Cube wasn't too interesting, but I found a cute stuffed Totoro for the kid to be. I finally found my chocolate covered fried almonds so I bought almost their entire stock. I tried to see another temple before I left Kyoto, but it was already closed.
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People sleep on the trains all the time in Japan, and were quite talented at remaining upright while sleeping so I was surprised when the girl next to me put her head on my shoulder. Then slipped down to my arm. I was worried that her head was going to end up in my lap next and then she'd wake up. I wasn't sure what the etiquette was concerning my situation, but I figured she wouldn't want to wake up to find herself in a compromising position with a stranger. I tried to figure out how to get her to stop leaning on me without pushing her. I figured the trick would be to move my arm in just enough so she leaned over enough to wake up and right herself. Of course if that didn't work her head would've been in my lap. I tried it and she straightened up only to sway over onto me less than a minute later. I wondered if the other people on the train felt sorry for me or the girl, or it was all normal. At the girl's stop she turned to look at me before she got off the train and she was amazingly cute. If I knew that I would have let her lean on me the entire time.
Later I asked Steve what the etiquette would be, and he said if it was a guy he'd jab him in the ribs with his elbow, but if it was a cute girl he'd let her sleep on him then possibly get her number later. He thought she was giving me the go sign when she looked at me, but I'm married so it makes no difference. I asked Rina to get the Japanese perspective, and she said if the guy looked good she'd let him be, but he was ugly she'd give him a shove. I'm thinking Rina isn't a typical Japanese person.
It was sunset when I walked back to Steve's place, and all sorts of bugs were flying around. I noticed some small things flying irregularly, which were bats. I didn't even know Japan had bats.
I wasn't really hungry for dinner, but I knew I didn't want to have to get something later so I got some karagekun (little karage [fried chicken]) from Lawson to snack on. They were ok, but the chicken tasted funny. I'm seriously convinced that I don't care for Japanese chicken.
Steve got back to his place late, and he was hungry so we went to Gusto for a late dinner. Gusto is basically the Denny's of Japan so they're open late and frequented by younger people. Steve recommended the burger and fries and the drink bar (which had different types of teas, sodas, and orange juice) so I opted for both. Steve insisted that the Fanta melon soda tasted better than the Suntory one so I tried it out of curiosity. If you like melon flavored syrup and water better than just sugar and water then it tasted better, but I didn't care for it. The hamburger and fries were good enough that I'd go to Gusto for them again.
Steve had to go to work, but he got Rina to show me around. It was a rainy day so all I wanted to do was build a Gundam model. I went to the post office to get some money from the international ATM (which speaks English), and picked up some food from the grocery store by the Joshin. I got ebi chiri [shrimp in chile sauce]; edamame [soy beans]; some sort of bread with mountain gourd, bacon, and a dollop of mayonnaise; and half a pizza with cheese, ham, corn, and a little mayonnaise on it.
Afterwards I went to Green City to get a couple of Gundam models and returned to Steve's to work on one of the new ones. Rina watched tv while I worked on my model, and we talked about whatever. When Rina found out that I liked agedashi dofu she recommended her dad's. She seemed determined to get us back to her family's restaurant.
The filling in the bread was tasty as hell except for the mayonnaise, which was gross cooked. The pizza had a thick, crispy Sicilian crust with very good toppings (minus the mayo of course). If only supermarkets made pizza that good in the US. The ebi chiri was marked as spicy, but it was actually sweet. I was very disappointed with it. Rina said she made a very good ebi chiri (lot of good that did me).
Watching tv I found out there was a Samba Festival that day in Kobe. I kicked myself for not knowing about it because watching half naked chicks shaking their asses would've been a lot of fun.
When Steve came home we all went out to dinner at the yakiniku place by the Neyagawashi station. The place was busy so it looked like we weren't the only people looking forward to them re-opening.
Steve and I searched the menu for the Volume Set we had the last time I was at Yamaki, but it had devolved into a combination plate of innards. Originally the only innards were the small intestine, which were great, but now there were all sorts of innards we couldn't identify. We were thinking about ordering the small intestine separately, but they charged about $20 for it, which was more than we wanted to pay for it. We went with the genki set (kalbi, roast, tongue, and some other stuff) instead. We also got a kimchi combination (cabbage, daikon, and cucumbers) and I got an assortment of mushrooms.
Pretty much all of the meat was excellent, except for the tongue which was much too chewy, and even though there wasn't any heat to the marinades they were complex and satisfying. Steve and Rina doubted the mushrooms, but they only had to taste one of the mushrooms to be convinced. The marinade on the mushrooms was once again great, and the mushrooms ranged from sweet to meaty. I could've eaten two orders of them. The kimchis were all complex and hot. I could've eaten two orders of those too.
I've been to plenty of excellent Korean barbecue restaurants, but Yamaki may have been the best.
Okaasan [mother (Steve's old host mom)] wanted to do something with us so she decided to take us to the Ninja House on Sunday. We had to wake up early to meet her at the Gotenyama station, where she and a friend of her's picked us up. She drove us east into the mountains into the middle of nowhere.
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Along the way we stopped at a little farmer's market so Okaasan could pick up some vegetables. Steve was looking for a snack when I found three containers of small strawberries for ¥100. That was cheap! Not sure I read the sign correctly (it was in Japanese after all) I was trying to find Steve to verify it when some middle aged woman swooped in and took the entire palate of strawberries. I guess I had the price correct after all. I learned not to leave something I wanted laying around for other people to take.
We drove through mountains where they grew rice and tea. I could even smell the tea roasters, which still wasn't a pleasant scent to me. Further into the mountains there were a ton of places that sold pottery, particularly tanuki statues. Okaasan said the area was famous for its pottery, specifically their tanuki statues. Tanuki are real animals that look like racoons, but they're also mythical animals attributed with shape shifting powers. Okaasan said that they are also known for their love of sake and causing mischief. A typical tanuki trick would be to pay for sake with money that would turn into leaves after they leave. Steve and I noticed that most tanuki were depicted with huge balls that touched the ground when they were standing, but no one seemed to know how that came to be. The best tanuki statue I saw had a Hanshin Tigers jersey on.
About the time Steve and I were starving Okaasan pulled into the parking lot of a pottery museum to have a picnic. She made Japanese curry beef and sandwiches for lunch. It was decent, but I was disappointed that she didn't make her great croquettes.
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After lunch Okaasan kept driving until we came to the Ninja House in Koka, home of the famous Koga ninja clan (the subject of many anime and probably manga too). We paid the entrance fee and were given some "ninja tea" exclusive to Ninja House. It was supposed to be a two or three country blend, but it didn't taste special.
I finally learned how to drink boiling hot tea without burning my mouth. The trick is to take really shallow sips while simultaneously sucking in a lot of air into your mouth. I told Steve how to do it and he didn't like it because he said he couldn't taste the tea, but he didn't think the tea tasted good when it cooled down.
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Some old guy conducted a tour of the house and I didn't get much out of it because Steve didn't translate much of it. After the tour we considered throwing shurikens ["ninja stars"] at a target for ¥300 for 10 shuriken. It seemed a little pricey to me, but Steve convinced me to try it. I didn't hit the target in the 10 tries. We both liked it so much we did it twice. I hit the target three times, including the bullseye once, but those shuriken were the only ones that didn't stick. It was a ton of fun and reminded me of when I was a kid buying shuriken at the swap meet (of course those were so dull they couldn't stick in anything).
Okaasan dropped us off at the Gotenyama station and we went to the Korien station so we could check out the Toys R Us by the station. We didn't know it before, but the area west of the station was full of women. A lot of them were even Steve's type, slutty. I stopped at a bakery that actually made sweet potato pies so I got one and a sugar donut. The girl behind the counter was pretty cute, and Steve swore she gave a friendlier than necessary smile so he mentally noted to return to the bakery some other day. The donut was covered in sugar, but somehow the sugar wasn't sweet. I didn't even know that non-sweet sugar was possible. The sweet potato pie was pretty good, but not as good as Kobeya.
We went to the Toys R Us, and they had a huge Gundam model I'd never seen before, the Sazabi. It was very cool, but expensive enough that I had to think about whether I was going to buy it or not. Remembering the strawberries I walked around holding the only box they had while I made up my mind, but it wasn't a surprise when I bought it.
While in the check out line there was a chick behind us with a rather hard face, long black hair in ringlets, yellow knit pants with green and red trim, and the best ass I saw during my entire time in Japan. I thought she was probably half Brazilian, which explained her incredible ass, while Steve thought she was half Korean, which explained the face to him. At the very least she didn't seem Japanese because she was wearing the only thong I saw the entire time. She probably had to order it off the internet.
Afterwards we hit the arcade to play some Mario Kart Grand Prix.
I wanted to go back to Hoshi no Mori, but the most convenient day for that would've been Wednesday, the same day they were closed. It took me a while to decide that going there Sunday night would be worth the trouble.
Rina insisted that Hoshi no Mori was only a ten minute bike ride from Steve's apartment, but we didn't believe her. I didn't feel like taking the train so we took a chance on Rina's directions. She gave vague directions and Steve almost turned around before we found the street we were supposed to turn on. Once we found the street I was surprised how quickly we went from the city to the "rural city". We even rode along a wetland with so many frogs that you would have to shout to be heard over the croaking. We found the JR train line that hit the Hoshida station, but had to guess which direction the station was in (hooray vague directions). We figured it was further away instead of closer and got lucky. It took us 30 minutes to get to the restaurant, but that wasn't too bad for not getting good directions and riding uphill in the dark almost the entire way.
There were a couple of families seated at the restaurant's bar, and Rina's mom sat us at the end of the bar. Everyone was jovial and seemed to know each other. Rina told me to ask about ebi chiri if I went to the restaurant, but I didn't feel like it. Well she gave her parents instructions in case we showed up because after we were seated Rina's mom brought us a plate of ebi chiri that Rina made earlier. Her version was actually spicy, which made me happy.
I went with Rina's recommendations and got tempura and agedashi dofu. The tempura had much more meat and less vegetables than I expected, which sounds like a good thing, but it was the vegetables I wanted. We had fish, squid, shrimp, and broccoli tempura, and I was disappointed that I could tell just by looking at its sickly pale color that it was undercooked. Needless to say the tempura was only ok. The agedashi dofu was cubes of tofu in dashi with green onion, ginger, and katsuobushi [dried bonito flakes]. The dashi was very good and the katsuobushi was very high quality. The combination was great and even Steve, who's not much for tofu, liked it. Rina was at least right about her dad's agedashi dofu.
They also brought us some Japanese pickles and those were excellent. Halfway through our meal Rina's dad gave us some fish bone crackers (fins and bones very lightly battered and deep fried). They were crispy, crunchy, and nicely spiced. I dug them, but Steve only ate them to be nice because fried fish bones don't appeal to him. Before we were done eating I got an order kanpachi nigiri sushi. It wasn't as great as the first time I had it, but it was tasty.
There was a teenage girl seated next to Steve whose mom encouraged her to practice her English with Steve. The daughter said what I imagine is the one of the first English phrases they learn in school, "Hello, my name is x and my hobbies are y." The conversation didn't progress too much past that in English. There was also a drunk old guy who was trying to say something to Steve, but was difficult for Steve to understand because of his slurring.
Before we left Rina's mom gave us postcards as omiyage [a souvenir indicative of a specific place]. I thought that was very nice, and it made me extremely happy because my mom wanted a postcard and they are impossible to find in Japan. Rina's mom said I looked completely different this time. Not like a basketball player after all, but Will Smith. I guess I would've thought that was weird if I hadn't heard it before (even though I don't look a thing like Will Smith). Steve thought it was weird when she said I was genki [energetic] and thought she was getting a crush on me.
After dinner we rode home, and it was a lot easier because it was all downhill. It only took 10 or 15 minutes so maybe Rina wasn't smoking crack. We finished the night by working on our Gundam models.
The Aoi Matsuri was on Monday so Steve and I headed to Kyoto. Before we left the Neyagawashi station we picked up some sweet potatoes that Steve raved about. They were actually regular potatoes covered in a hard candy shell that had an impressive crunch. It was weird on potatoes.
We got a parade map before we left the train station in Kyoto, but the parade was easy to find because the route only ran about a block from the station and there were large crowds lining the streets. We stood in a shaded spot and waited for the parade. It was weird that they only closed off most of the lanes of traffic instead of closing off the streets. I also found it strange to see so many other foreigners around, but we had a good conversation with a couple from Berkeley before the parade.
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The parade finally got to us and it was just a parade; there wasn't any music, drinking, or fun to it. Not even a food stall. I'm sure if the festival was in Osaka the streets would've been lined with food stalls. We found it extremely disappointing, especially considering the Gion Matsuri has floats, music, and drinking. They probably even close the streets off.
We didn't wait for the parade to finish before walking off to find something else to do. We stopped at a temple and I took some pictures in their graveyard.
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While I was taking pictures some Americans were looking around and one of them asked if the Japanese cremated their dead. Whoever it was they asked didn't know so Steve told them yes otherwise they'd have to bury people standing up because of the lack of space in Japan. Steve sounded a little sarcastic, but the people were friendly anyway. They were an old couple from Florida visiting their son who lives in Japan.
We moved on and walked through the Imperial Palace grounds, which was ok. If we wanted to see the actual palace it required pre-approval by the Imperial household.
We were hungry after walking around so we found someplace to eat. There was a restaurant that doubled as a bakery that looked like a good option. They were so busy that we had to sign in so while we waited I looked at their baked items, which were overwhelmingly savory.
We were seated and we both went with a set meal that had a salad, entree, unlimited bread, and an after meal drink. We ordered and all the food came out at once. The small green salad came with a very good vinaigrette. The entree was a sausage-mushroom curry gratin that sounded better than it tasted. The sausage was actually cut up hot dogs and the dish was very cheesy. It just seemed to be missing something.
The unlimited bread was the best part of lunch because I got to try a lot of different breads: a thick crusty bread that wasn't bad, a sweet green roll made with mugwort (the stuff they put in yomogi dango [green mochi balls]), a bread with sweet green beans in it that was good, a croissant that was pretty good, and a regular roll that was decent. I was surprised they had a few sweet breads because they didn't sell them in their bakery.
After we finished our lunch we were brought iced coffee. It was bitter, nasty stuff that took three sugars and a container of gum syrup to make it palatable.
Lunch was decent, but I wouldn't return to Shin Shin Dou again.
After lunch we headed to the part of Kyoto I was familiar with and we looked at a temple and some shrines. The temple had a great interior, but like most temples was too dark for me to get any really good pictures. I saw a poster for a matsuri the temple was having that involved carrying some shrine around Kyoto the Friday and Saturday after I left. It looked a lot more fun than the Aoi Matsuri.
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We stopped at a different temple and I got a charm for Lynn to have a good delivery. I didn't find her any other souvenirs so I hoped she'd be happy with that. She had told me before I left that she would be happier if I got something cool for our kid to be than if I found something cool for her. I'd test her honesty because I found a colorful mobile with little stuffed maneki neko [lucky cats] and ryo [old Japanese gold currency] and other lucky items for the kid to be. It was pretty damn cool.
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I was in a touristy spot so you'd expect that I'd get ripped off, but the prices in Japan never seemed to vary by much (unless you're talking Gundam models).
I took Steve to the arcade I found to play some ¥50 Gundam Z DX A.E.U.G. vs. Titans. Afterwards we went to Namco Tower and played Mario Kart Grand Prix. Steve got better at the game than me and kept kicking my ass.
All video gamed out we headed across the river to Gion to try and find some interesting food. While looking at the food display of some cafe a lady came out of the cafe and started talking to us. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that she was half of the old couple we had talked to earlier in the graveyard. Their son was off looking for a steak house he had eaten at months earlier and they were waiting at the cafe for him. I was surprised we ran into them again because Kyoto is a big place.
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Steak sounded great so I wanted to find a steak house for dinner. The only one we found was in Gion and extremely expensive. I didn't like that they didn't specify how much beef you got, but I was considering it anyway. Steve didn't want to spend that much money on what was potentially a tiny portion of steak so we moved on.
We were lucky to see some real geisha and maiko [geisha in training].
We headed north of Gion and found ourselves in an adult entertainment district. There were restaurants there too so we looked around. There were generally a lot of hot chicks in Kyoto, but there were even more working in the clubs in the area. We didn't find any restaurants that looked good, but the scenery was so we walked around longer than we should've.
We were both indecisive until I finally felt faint so we had to find someplace quick. We were standing right in front of an Indian restaurant, and I have pretty good luck with Indian restaurants so I wanted to give them a try. Steve normally doesn't like Indian but he was starving too.
We were seated and tried to decide on what to drink. They had the usual assortment of Japanese beers, but they also had an Indian beer. Eventually I decided that I actually wanted a juice instead, and asked our waiter if they had nimbu pani [lemonade] even though it wasn't on the menu. Our waiter, an Indian who spoke English, looked at me funny when I asked the question, but answered yes. Steve decided to get one too even though he never tried a nimbu pani before. It came unsweetened with two containers of gum syrup. One servings of syrup made the lemonade enjoyable sweet for me, but Steve liked it tart.
The menu in front of the restaurant had a set menu called the Champa(?) Set that came with a salad, tandoor chicken, choice of curry or vegetables, choice of rice, naan, dessert, and an after dinner drink. I ordered all my dishes spicy because I really wanted something hot, but I hoped I wouldn't regret it since Indian can be excessively hot. I took a chance though because I figured they'd probably been in Japan long enough to tone their spiciness down.
The salad was coleslaw and it was served with a whole leg of tandoor chicken. I didn't expect them to be so generous with the chicken, especially in Japan, so I was inclined to like the restaurant. The coleslaw was pretty good and the tandoor chicken was spiced up with white pepper. The chicken was tender, and this was one of the few times I've liked tandoor chicken.
Steve went for mixed vegetables while I got mutton curry. All the dishes were brought out in separate bowls along with half of a very large naan the rice. Naan is one of my favorite things in the world so I was disappointed that they would go a little cheap with the naan even though they were generous with the chicken. The mixed vegetables were creamy and had a good flavor while the mutton was tender and spicy. I liked the mutton better and Steve liked the vegetables better, but both dishes were excellent. We got to choose between rice pilaf and basmati rice, and I thought the pilaf would have more flavor, but it tasted like dishwater. I couldn't eat much of it, but Steve managed to get through it. The naan was coated in ghee [clarified butter] and so tasty that we got another order of it. We used our naan to sop up the sauces from the bowls.
Dessert was vanilla ice cream with mango sauce. It was simple and tasty. We both got chai as our after dinner drink. I'm not a big fan of chai, but the addition of a container of syrup made it quite tasty.
Dinner wasn't cheap, but we were both extremely happy with it.
Steve wanted to walk around the entertainment district one last time before we left Kyoto, but all the chicks were replaced by bumper to bumper taxis. I guess they wouldn't need to be out because they already got to work. Oh well.
We took the train to the Korien station and hit the arcade to get in some Gundam action 10 minutes before they closed. The guys working there probably didn't appreciate two guys walking in when they obviously shut off all the games in the front half the arcade, but there was already a group of guys playing Gundam DX. We played until they really cranked up the "Auld Lang Syne" (the Japanese hint to leave when a place is closing). Normally Korien is lively, but at 10 on a Monday night it was dead. We weren't ready to call it a night, but with nothing else to do we walked back to Steve's place.
Steve lived off a freeway that looked exactly like any other street except for the freeway signs. On the way back to Steve's place we saw several people pulled over to the outermost lane asleep in their cars. I'm not sure what was more f-ed up, the fact that they were asleep on a freeway or that they left the car running while they slept.
The first time Steve lived in Japan he went to some ramen place in Namba that was supposed to renowned for their ramen. He wasn't impressed with their noodles, but he said their tea, made out of roast pig bones, was the best tea he'd ever had. That sounded interesting enough for me to want to try it.
While at the Neyagawashi station and I picked up a couple of sweet potato pies and a blueberry pie from Kobeya. Everything was very tasty.
Steve only went to the ramen place once years earlier so he didn't remember where it was. He asked for directions from several different people until someone directed us to Ippudo, which wasn't the place Steve ate at. Despite my baked snacks I was starving so I was willing to try any ramen place at that point.
We walked into Ippudo and I immediately didn't feel hip enough to be there: the interior felt trendy even though it was warm with liberal amounts of wood and the wait staff wore black t-shirts, black pants, and red do-rags. We sat down and looked at the menu. Ippudo made Kyuushu style ramen, meaning tonkotsu broth [roast pig bones]. At least those directions took us to a similar ramen place. There were a couple of ramen options including one called akamarushinaji ramen, which cost ¥100 more than the other ramens because it had some sort of "fragrant oil" in it. It was described as rich, but "fragrant oil" didn't sound like it was worth a ¥100 to me. Steve tried it while I got a bowl of ramen that they said was "unpretentious" with lots of roast pork in it.
There was a pitcher of tea at our table, and it wasn't bad. Steve said it wasn't nearly as good as the tea we were looking for.
My soup broth was tasty in a straight forward way. It really was unpretentious! The roast pork was seasoned and a little salty. The saltiness didn't bother me until I had a few pieces because it had a cumulative effect. I sampled Steve's soup to try out the red oil, and it was amazing. The red oil was the pan drippings from the roast pork, and it added yet another dimension to an already tasty ramen. I had to give credit to their copywriter/translator for being 100% accurate. I also had to give Ippudo credit for having a cool bathroom and lots of ramen condiments.
After lunch we went to Den Den Town (an area known for electronics metamorphosing itself into a male playground sans hookers, but lots of porn shops and maid cafes) to go to the Osaka Gundams store. We had a hard time finding it, but we did find other toy shops and shops selling prizes from capsule machines and ufo catchers. We stopped at one toy store and I found the toy version of my Gouf with the gatling shield. It was way too cool for me to pass up even if the gatling shield was impractical (thanks again for mentioning it Roy).
Steve came to Den Den Town with another goal in mind besides taking me to Osaka Gundams. He was there to sell porn he won from ufo catchers. It was funny because he carried it around in a conspicuous little black bag. One store wanted to give him like ¥132 for the whole bag (roughly 5 dvds and 2 video tapes) which ruined his plans of selling porn to subsidize his ufo catcher habit. It also meant he had to carry around his little black bag of porn for the rest of the day.
We went to the big (six story?) Joshin toy store in Den Den Town, and there were floors for trains, model cars, and the most realistic looking toy machine guns you've ever seen, but not one Gundam in the entire place. Steve asked someone who worked there and they gave us a map to the Osaka Gundams store (which is owned by Joshin). Looking at the map it turned out that we made a right turn when we should have made a left. Oh well.
We found Osaka Gundams and checked out their inventory. They didn't have any models or toys I hadn't already seen, but I saw a model I'd never seen before in their model display. They didn't have it in stock, but they had a vintage one for ¥23,500, which was a little too insane. One of the guys working there was putting a model together so Steve and I asked him model building questions. I'm sure we made his day because what could possibly be better for a huge Gundam geek than to have other Gundam geeks appreciate his knowledge. He taught us a great trick for doing panel lines, which was simply diluting black paint down with thinner so it would fill in the line just by touching the paint brush to it. Then you clean up any mess by using a q-tip soaked in paint thinner. Simple yet highly effective. I thought it was the most useful tip ever because panel lines improve the look of a Gundam model more than anything else.
We headed to Umeda to look for Kobe beef, but everything we found was too expensive (like ¥3,000 for 170g of beef). We decided to eat Mexican at Que Sueve instead, but they charged ¥500 per person just to sit so we left on principle. We looked for the Italian restaurant we ate at last time, but we couldn't the department store it was in. We found an Italian restaurant named Loro, which looked like it would do.
Steve and I both got a Milan Set, a four course set menu with a choice of drink, pasta, and entree. Unfortunately I didn't write down the specifics so the only things I remember was that there were an assortment of appetizers that were good, but the rest of dinner was only decent.
After dinner we headed back home. I realized I needed a cardboard box to cart all my crap back home with me. I only came with a carry on bag so checking in a box wouldn't be a problem, assuming I could find a box big enough to hold that Sazabi model. We stopped at a Lawson on the way back to Steve's place and found a perfectly sized box, but the guy behind the counter said they were using it. Steve wouldn't give up on the box so we got a box from Gusto and tried to trade it for the larger box at Lawson. The guy behind the counter said he'd have to ask his manager if we could have it. I couldn't tell if he was blowing us off or if he really was so far down the chain of command that he couldn't even make a decision concerning a box. Perturbed I figured we'd find a box at Green City in the morning.
It was raining when I woke up, but I still needed to find a box. Steve had a good feeling about the hyaku en store [¥100 or dollar store] next to Green City, and we found an appropriately sized box there. Steve asked for it and they gave it to us. Box taken care of I could spend the rest of the day worry free.
I had already made up my mind to spend my last full day in Japan looking at tori gates and shrines rain or shine although I would've preferred to pack. I found out the Fushimi Shrine, the shrine featured in the "Memoirs of a Geisha" movie, was located just outside of Kyoto at the Fushiminari station. I wondered why some of the express trains stopped at this tiny station in the middle of nowhere and now I knew.
Steve and I walked towards the shrine and smelled someone baking something good. There was a shop with an old guy making fortune cookies out of an eggless miso based batter. It was entertaining watching him fold the warm flat wafers into the fortune cookie shape. We wondered what they tasted like so split a small bag. The cookies were like cement, but they didn't taste bad. They also had a couple soy beans and a fortune in them. I had Steve try and read the fortunes, but he said they used uncommon kanji. What he could understand on my two fortunes was the proclamation of luck and big luck. Later Rina confirmed the kanji was very difficult to read so the only thing they could make out on one fortune was something about making my wife cry. Yep, that sounded like my fortune.
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The temple complex was very large with an entire path (two paths in one spot) of tori gates up the mountain. The tori gates were donated by businesses as an offering to the temple so each gate bore the name of the business that donated it. Temple donations are common in Japan and usually take the form of sake. In the small Kyoto temples the sake donations were usually the large 1.8 liter bottles, but at the shrine they were casks of sake.
Oddly almost the entire complex smelt like watered down urine. It didn't smell like human pee so I wondered if the priests sprayed the place down in fox pee (the fox is the temple's mascot with fox statues and shrines sprinkled throughout the complex). They had charms for sale, every temple does, but these charms were better looking than most. Maybe being a temple for businesses they had their own marketing department? My two favorite charms were a cool looking sticker with foxes on it and a charm made with two fake coins. I went with the coins because it was a money making charm, which seemed more practical than the sticker, which was a safe driving charm (I don't think the charm covers someone else's bad driving, which is what I would need it for). Steve liked the money making charm enough to get one too.
Rina met us there and we explored more of the complex, but we never went further up the mountain.
We left the shrine and ate at a restaurant on the way back to the train station. I got a large niku donburi [beef rice bowl], which came with miso soup, pickles, and tofu. The miso soup was salty and bland, but the tofu and the pickles were tasty. The beef was very thinly sliced and very good. Steve said it tasted like beef jerky. It was a good lunch.
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After lunch Steve went to work, and Rina and I went to Kiyomizudera [Pure Water Temple] in Kyoto. On our way Rina told me about a temple we passed for ending relationships that she prayed at twice. I was surprised because she didn't seem the type to pray for someone to break up. Her first visit was because the people in her office wanted some guy to quit, and her second visit was to give thanks after he quit. I guess there's more than one way to end a relationship.
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The rain didn't let up so it was wet the entire time. It made taking pictures difficult, but Rina was a good umbrella holder. Rina had to leave so I took more pictures on my own, but didn't feel like tromping around in the rain to explore the rest of the complex.
It rained all day, but never really got cold even when the temperature dropped down to 16 degrees celsius. After the temple I went to Namco Tower to play some ¥50 Gundam Z DX A.E.U.G. vs. Titans. I tried out "The O" and loved it because it could bust out with three swords at the same time to inflict some major damage. Eventually even that got boring so I headed back to the Korien station.
On the train I remembered I had gone at least four days without korokke so stopped at Frest to pick some up. Thinking about it korokke are the Japanese food I'll miss the most after this trip. I got a couple of korokke from the deli section and a few boxes of the Glico chocolate covered fried almonds. I headed to Pompadour to try some of those baked items I'd previously been avoiding. Almost all bakeries made curry donuts so I finally broke down and tried one. I also picked up a curry bread (another ubiquitous baked item) for comparison.
When I got to Steve's place I turned on the tv out of habit and heard a familiar song. It took a few seconds for me to place it as the Naruto theme song. I completely forgot about it, but I got home just in time to watch Naruto! I was pleased with my good timing, and ate my korokke as I watched Naruto. The supermarket korokke were only ok, but still managed to be better than most of the ones I'd had in Phoenix.
Steve and I made plans to meet at the Neyagawashi station so we could go to Shinsaibashi and meet Steve's friend Hiro. We wanted to find that kick ass restaurant in Shinsaibashi that we ate at the last time I was in Japan in hopes of finding reasonably priced Kobe beef. Steve wasn't sure we could find it again, but I have a pretty good memory for restaurants so I was confident. Our search didn't start well, but as we reacquainted ourselves with the area we knew exactly where the restaurant was before we found it. Unfortunately it went out of business (which might explain the reasonably priced Kobe beef).
We walked around looking for a restaurant, but after 10 on a weeknight our choices were limited because most restaurants were closed. I was surprised given Shinsaibashi's entertainment nature. We stood around in front of a gyoza shop debating whether to go in or not when the proprietress came out and said one of few words of Japanese I know, "Oishii [Delicious]". Steve thought being welcomed in was much better than being told to go away so we went in. The lady said one of the guys from SMAP (a boy band of sorts so only Japanese fan girls would care) likes the place.
We looked at the menu and I was surprised that there were 10 gyoza to an order. Someone (the woman or the old guy working there) told us they were small, but we still only got one order to split between us. The gyoza were indeed very small, almost dainty, but they were very crispy with a good pork filling. They also came with four dipping sauces: a pepper sauce, Korean miso, mayonnaise, and a garlic-chili sauce. The pepper sauce tasted kind of like refried beans with a lot of black pepper. The garlic-chili sauce was easily the best of the bunch for obvious reasons. The miso sauce was miso so what can you say about it? Hiro was the only one hitting the mayonnaise, which amused Steve and I because it was so stereotypically Japanese and mayonnaise with gyoza sounded so completely wrong.
We all ordered something else to eat. Both Steve and I got pork with kim chi. Steve expected it to be hotter, but I thought it was pretty good anyway.
It was close to midnight when we were done eating so we either had to hurry to catch a train before they stopped running or spend all night in Shinsaibashi. Steve wanted to stay out, but most of the places in Shinsaibashi were already closed and I wanted to get a good night's sleep before leaving. We returned home and watched some show about pachinko that featured an idol [talent] with big boobs in a skimpy cowgirl costume. Unfortunately I didn't catch her name. Whoever she was she was hot and Megumi now has competition for my favorite idol.
I woke up to a hot day, which didn't bother me too much because hot and dry is better than wet when I had to take my luggage and cardboard box all the way to the train station. I had time for lunch before I left so I wanted to try the all you can eat Japanese beef restaurant, Kui Kui, Steve and I ran across looking for the JJ Club. Bill and Rina were going to join us, but that was going to wreck our schedule; they wanted us to meet them at the train station, which would have cost us about 30 minutes we didn't have to spare. Luckily Bill bowed out leaving Rina, who we met along the way to the restaurant. Steve and I were riding bikes, which made our transit quick enough that I wouldn't worry about catching the limo bus or Steve getting to work on time. Rina didn't want to ride on the back of Steve's bike, but she didn't have a choice.
We got to Kui Kui before they opened so we had about ten minutes to kill. Some older women got there after us, but managed to get in when the restaurant opened before we did. Remembering the tabehoudai [all you can eat] incident the last time I was in Japan had me wondering if they'd even let us in. They sat us without even blinking.
Our table had a grill in the center like any yakiniku place and we were told the two lunch options: ¥1,400 for 90 minutes or ¥1,000 for an hour. We opted for the hour option so we didn't dawdle.
I walked around taking in all the options: yakiniku, yakisoba, "new style jaga", udon with noodles you boiled yourself, takoyaki, fried chicken, homemade curry, salad, fresh fruit, and unlimited soft drinks. Steve said there was even an unlimited alcohol option. The overall selection was impressive, and there were a good number of choices just for yakiniku, but as you'd expect most of the meat for the yakiniku was cheap.
The takoyaki and yakisoba were foul, and the fried chicken was ok, but the buttered potatoes and onions of the "new style jaga" (basically nikujaga with sausage instead of beef) were great. I swear I have cheap tastes because I go to an all you can (m)eat place and like the potatoes best. I didn't try the curry, but Rina said it was spicy and tasty.
I tried one last new soda, the Suntory "White Water". It had an opaque milky white color and didn't taste like much, except maybe a little creamy. It was better than Pepsi though. Steve wouldn't touch the stuff because of the many jokes that could be made about the soda.
For some inexplicable reason I liked Kui Kui a lot for a buffet. If I went there again I'd go for the 90 minute option so I didn't feel rushed, and could try the udon and curry.
Fat people in Japan were a rarity, much more so than foreigners, but there were more than a few in Kui Kui. No surprise I guess.
After lunch we rode back to Steve's place and picked up my luggage. Looking at my box it occurred to me that it could be a feminine hygiene product box. It may have been a box for Japanese Tampax, but it was full of Gundam; the only thing more masculine would've been a box full of porn. The box wasn't heavy, but after carrying it half a mile it felt pretty heavy. We took the train to the Moriguchi station and I got my limo bus ticket to Kansai Airport. Steve and Rina had to leave, and I had an hour wait for the bus, but I had a book to read so it wasn't a bad wait.
The airport wasn't as hot as when I arrived so I was more comfortable. I had my last ¥1,000 in cash so I looked at the different shops in the airport for something worthwhile. I almost got five boxes of my chocolate covered fried almonds, but decided on a box of Mary's chocolate instead. (Lynn and I agreed that Mary's chocolate was quite good.)
I had a much easier time on the flight home than the flight out because I slept a good five or six hours (unfortunately not consecutively). I watched "Match Point" because I thought it was going to be a comedy ("Wimbledon"), but it was a pretty screwed up drama instead. At least Scarlett Johansson was hot in the movie.
There was some turbulence over the Bering Strait that reminded me how deathly afraid I am of turbulence. I would have been really unhappy about dying too because "Match Point" put me in a terrible state of mind (I really would've preferred to watch "Wimbledon" instead). At least there wasn't anything else memorable for the rest of the flight.
When I started this trip I stuck with Coke, but I wondered how the domestic stuff tasted. When we looked for JJ Club I tried C.C. Lemon because it had a lot of vitamin C in it and it sounded refreshing. I didn't expect it to be such a tasty lemon soda. It was widely available so it became my drink of choice. Sankyu Shi Shi Remon.
Pocari Sweat has long been the butt of jokes because of its name so I thought I should actually try it once. It tasted like grapefruit flavored Gatorade, which isn't something I enjoy. I Love Kiss was a drink I bought because of the name and the fact that it was pink. Surprisingly it was pretty tasty and not too sweet.
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I already wrote about Suntory Pop Melon and Fanta Melon, but I didn't know Bubble Man II was also a melon soda. I didn't care for it, but I just might not be a melon soda person. I only bought it for the packaging anyway.
![Bubble Man](javascript:popImage('/images/Japan0506/BubbleMan01.jpg','Bubble Man', 'I never got to taste Bubble Man before I left Japan, which was a shame because it was "Vitamin B6 Powered!!".'))
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A billion people have said it before, but packaging is ridiculous in Japan. I'd routinely get two bags for two separate items, and one time I got a bag for something that was already in a bag. Even my favorite chocolate covered fried almonds came individually wrapped (which might explain why there's only 12 to a ¥200 package).
Practically the rest of the world uses the metric system and the celsius scale. I have no problem with meters, grams, etc, even if I don't always remember the conversions (how many grams of cheese makes a good serving for two people?), but the celsius scale sucks. When there are only three or four degrees difference between the daily high and low there's something wrong with the system. Especially when those four degrees are the difference between and hot day and a cold one.
Most Japanese women I saw didn't have curves so it made me appreciate curves even more. That's not to say Japanese women weren't attractive because there were more than a few hot ones. Brown hair was all the rage with the chicks as were shorts with mid thigh high stockings. The stockings weren't bad, but the shorts were usually ugly. Panty lines were everywhere because thongs were nonexistent in Japan. Conversely nipples almost never made an appearance, which Steve attributed to the over abundance of padded bars in Japan.
All the hand soap I used in Japan smelled bad, and all the napkins seemed to made out of plastic coated paper.
Three years ago there weren't many credit cards, but now every store seemed to have their own branded credit card. Hooray progress (sarcasm).
There's an amazing amount of English used in Japan (train signs, some directions, and some business names) making running around a little easier for me, but it still wasn't easy. I would like to be able to communicate with people and most of their English ability seems to be in written, not spoken, English. I really need to learn Japanese someday.
It's just as easy to go malnourished in Japan as it is in America. Most of the cheaper Japanese food didn't come with vegetables, unless you count green onion as a vegetable.
I didn't eat as well this trip, but I had more fun. I also got over my traveling solo issue. When I got back home I thought I would never make that long plane trip again, but I got over it a week after I got back.
The camera I used was a Canon Powershot G5 digital camera and touch ups were done in Photoshop.
Anyway, you know the rest: the pictures are copyright by me, and unauthorized use is prohibited.
The fist time I visited Japan was during hanami [cherry blossom viewing season], a unique (and cold) time in Japan. I wanted to visit during another unique time, which wasn't cold, but I couldn't think of one. Murray suggested seeing the Gion Matsuri [Gion Festival] in Kyoto, one of Kyoto's three major festivals with big wooden floats, music, and sake. That sounded great so I planned on going in July for three weeks, but that didn't work out because Lynn found out she was pregnant and her due date was in early August. She was already unhappy that I was going to Japan without her, but if I missed the birth of our son she'd hate me forever. I cut my trip down to two weeks and opted to go in May because that's when the Aoi Matsuri [Hollyhock Festival] is held in Kyoto. Since the Aoi Matsuri is also one of the three major festivals then it should be as good as the Gion Matsuri right?