I'm sorry guys! I haven't been able to update for a full week because it's been so packed. It takes several hours to upload, edit, & organize photos, then choose which ones to photo collage with each other, upload them to the blog, caption them, and write about my day. I haven't been able to throw down long enough to do it all until now @.@ A week's worth of Japanese adventures coming your way!
Today I met Julia for lunch at a sushi place she had wanted to take me by her house! It was a HUGE place, with rows and rows of booths and several long revolving sushi counter-things. I say counter-things because they were like 3 stories high with 2 tiers of revolving belts and the top level had toy machines. It was awesome. I had a blast just staring at the sushi as it passed and trying to figure out what they were based on my 4 years of serving sushi at the sushi place in Isla Vista.
I also tried a whole bunch of stuff I hadn't before, like some sort of egg custard-like soup with shrimp in it and cilantro on top and TORO SALMON. I've only had tuna toro before and it was insanely expensive and utterly delicious. This was no exception except it was dead cheap at $1.25. Every dish here was $1.25 except for bigger stuff like tempura and stuff which was a whopping $2.50 -.- Why do I not live in Japan again? More specifically, why do I not live in THIS SUSHI PLACE in Japan?? Sushi is so expensive in America and not nearly as good-quality, authentic, or delicious. Or fun. See below.
I also tried a whole bunch of stuff I hadn't before, like some sort of egg custard-like soup with shrimp in it and cilantro on top and TORO SALMON. I've only had tuna toro before and it was insanely expensive and utterly delicious. This was no exception except it was dead cheap at $1.25. Every dish here was $1.25 except for bigger stuff like tempura and stuff which was a whopping $2.50 -.- Why do I not live in Japan again? More specifically, why do I not live in THIS SUSHI PLACE in Japan?? Sushi is so expensive in America and not nearly as good-quality, authentic, or delicious. Or fun. See below.
1. The Asians have it right. Instead of having to flag down irritated and hassled waiters for more water, they always give you either a pitcher of iced water of your own on your table or a way of getting water yourself like here. They had cups available on the third level of the sushi conveyor belt thingie and a place to get cold water. They also had a tap directly on our table with hot water, because to one-up America once again, they give you free green tea here EVERYWHERE. And not the nasty green tea. Legit matcha powder that you mix yourself.
2. Touch screen on top to scroll through rolls and dishes you could want (they had everything, udon, tempura, soups, etc). If you don't see something you want on the never-ending packed sushi conveyor belt you just order it and it gets made then zipped along the second level of the sushi conveyer belt thing on another conveyor belt directly to your table. HOW FREAKING COOL IS THIS. I was practically bouncing in my seat at this point, I was so excited hahah. A little voice announces it is here and it beeps until you take the dish off.
3. There is a slim disposal chute for your empty sushi plates and it counts them as they go down. Once you hit 5 dishes, you get to play a game on the touch screen where if you are lucky, you get a prize in a plastic ball from one of the toy containers on the third level of the sushi conveyor belt thingies. Completely childish but I loved it. I make no apologies :D Julia told me that's why this place is really popular for families with kids. Because everything was stupid cheap and equally as stupidly delicious, we ate our way to something like 12 dishes and I got a prize both times we got to play! They were funny little character phone charms :)
4. Their soy sauce containers. Whilst we clueless Americans try to pour shoyu on our sushi, accidently tip too far or don't pull back in time and end up drowning our plate, the Japanese have solved this problem. There is a nub on the top that you have to push on as you tip or it won't pour out. And even then it doesn't waterfall out, it just drizzles so you have no problem controlling how much shoyu you want on your food. I should've just stolen one for home...
2. Touch screen on top to scroll through rolls and dishes you could want (they had everything, udon, tempura, soups, etc). If you don't see something you want on the never-ending packed sushi conveyor belt you just order it and it gets made then zipped along the second level of the sushi conveyer belt thing on another conveyor belt directly to your table. HOW FREAKING COOL IS THIS. I was practically bouncing in my seat at this point, I was so excited hahah. A little voice announces it is here and it beeps until you take the dish off.
3. There is a slim disposal chute for your empty sushi plates and it counts them as they go down. Once you hit 5 dishes, you get to play a game on the touch screen where if you are lucky, you get a prize in a plastic ball from one of the toy containers on the third level of the sushi conveyor belt thingies. Completely childish but I loved it. I make no apologies :D Julia told me that's why this place is really popular for families with kids. Because everything was stupid cheap and equally as stupidly delicious, we ate our way to something like 12 dishes and I got a prize both times we got to play! They were funny little character phone charms :)
4. Their soy sauce containers. Whilst we clueless Americans try to pour shoyu on our sushi, accidently tip too far or don't pull back in time and end up drowning our plate, the Japanese have solved this problem. There is a nub on the top that you have to push on as you tip or it won't pour out. And even then it doesn't waterfall out, it just drizzles so you have no problem controlling how much shoyu you want on your food. I should've just stolen one for home...
After lunch Julia took me to her university to walk around! It was beautiful and so clean inside, especially with all the brilliant autumn leaves everywhere. It is a private university so it is smaller than universities I am used to. Miwa-chan was telling me about she can't sleep in her classes because they are too small and the teacher will notice. I told her about UCSB and how ridiculously gigantic classes like the intro Bio series and Gen Chem are. No problems sleeping in there but you unfortunately probably need to know everything you want to sleep through hahah.
Julia took me to see one of her favorite teachers, who was a Thai professor from Los Angeles! He was very nice and quite an interesting person. He was a little quirky and stilted when I first was introduced to him, but the longer we talked the more he seemed to warm up. He was a lot of fun to talk to! After awhile we sat down and I noticed he had what looked like guitar music on his table. The next thing I noticed was that there were HAWAIIAN songs (ones I know from my childhood when my Dad would be singing them!) mixed in there. I asked about them and he brought out his ukelele, which he has been taking lessons in! We ended up having a mini sing-along with him playing various songs and me singing to the ones I knew. White Sandy Beaches is one of my Dad's personal favorite songs and truly a lovely piece. I highly recommend it to anyone who needs a spot of peaceful soothing music!
It was fun finding all the same things I was used to being around at my university here, like the tennis courts and rows upon rows of bicycles. Not all campuses are bike campuses of course, even in the US, but this one was just like UCSB :) The desks are different here though, which Julia also noted with me since she had been to schools in the US. They are often just like primary schools with shared desks, while individual desks attached to chairs are more common in the US universities I've been to.
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Tiramisu dessert, photos on Julia's desk that have me!!! <3 :), and her amazingly silent heater that is a boss. It comes alive in like 0.8 seconds and is blazing hot in like 1.5 seconds, all without a single sound. Not. A. Sound. It's scary. It's so efficient, I could totally see myself forgetting to turn it off then bumping into it from behind because I thought it was off and burning the hell out of myself @.@
After touring the university and darkness had fallen, we collected Julia's friend Miwako from the library where she had been working on the same senior thesis paper Julia has. They are both graduating this Spring, which is when Japanese universities hold graduation :) We had planned to cook what they called a "hotpot", which was a soup of sorts with all sorts of vegetables, meats, tofu, and other Japanese foods that I don't know the official name of but I recognize by sight haha. We hit the grocery store and loaded up on ingredients before heading back to Julia's and getting to work. It was a lot of fun! It's been a while since I've cooked with friends, not since college was still in full effect and our final round of finals hadn't hit yet (finals week meals generally equal copious amounts of Subway sandwiches and lots of coffee. Not much else...).
I am definitely going to try to recreate this "nabe" (is this correct Julia? I can't remember the exact term you told me) when I get home but I know it'll be next to impossible unless I make the trek to Marukai. Even the stock (of which there are TONS of different kinds) looked like it was solely Japanese, so I'm sure it'd be hard to find in the US, much less all the Japanese fresh foods we added to it. /sigh. Just another reason to come back lol.
We ate it around Julia's warming table with assorted wine cooler drinks and some hard liquor that was somewhere between vodka and Korean soju. Tasted more like soju but it definitely had an aftertaste like vodka that the soju didn't have. However it is still sipped by itself like soju, not taken in shots or in mixed drinks. The coolers were SO GOOD, my favorite was an aloe yogurt spritzer one that was incredible. I'm getting all types of education out here, even alcoholic ones haha. For dessert Miwa-chan and I had tiramisu we had picked out and Julia had a blueberry "raw cheese" dessert, which tasted a lot like a cheesecake yogurt. Major yum.
I am definitely going to try to recreate this "nabe" (is this correct Julia? I can't remember the exact term you told me) when I get home but I know it'll be next to impossible unless I make the trek to Marukai. Even the stock (of which there are TONS of different kinds) looked like it was solely Japanese, so I'm sure it'd be hard to find in the US, much less all the Japanese fresh foods we added to it. /sigh. Just another reason to come back lol.
We ate it around Julia's warming table with assorted wine cooler drinks and some hard liquor that was somewhere between vodka and Korean soju. Tasted more like soju but it definitely had an aftertaste like vodka that the soju didn't have. However it is still sipped by itself like soju, not taken in shots or in mixed drinks. The coolers were SO GOOD, my favorite was an aloe yogurt spritzer one that was incredible. I'm getting all types of education out here, even alcoholic ones haha. For dessert Miwa-chan and I had tiramisu we had picked out and Julia had a blueberry "raw cheese" dessert, which tasted a lot like a cheesecake yogurt. Major yum.
I stayed the night at Julia's apartment and the next morning we went out for coffee and breakfast! This was my first encounter with my latest coffeehouse obsession: what they call a Marron Marron Late. Marron means chestnut in Japanese, and this thing is SO GOOD. I have no idea what a Chestnut Latte is supposed to taste like, but this was slightly nutty, sweet and creamy and highly addicting. They also serve you your to-go cup with a sticker cover over the mouth either for sanitary purposes or to prevent any spillage. Or both, knowing Asians. They think of EVERYTHING :)
We got brunch at her school cafeteria, giving me a minor case of deja vu since I went with Yeji back in Korea to her school's cafeteria too haha. I love how you can order in some places (mostly ramen shops) with a machine. You put in your money, select which meal you want and it spits out a token or ticket with your chosen meal on it. When I ordered mine though, I was surprised to find an extra slip had come out. I asked Julia what it was and she said I was super lucky because it said "Winner!" on it, and she had never seen someone get one before from the machines!! We showed it to the counter ladies and they said I could get a free dessert :) I excitedly chose a green tea mousse with anko (red beans) and cream.
For my meal I got something that I forgot the name of but it was awesome. Slightly spicy delicious broth, noodles, a bed of greens, and ground beef with awesome seasonings and shopped onions/carrots. I've never had anything like it, but it was practically my ideal dish haha. Meat AND noodles AND salad AND soup. You'd think I'd be tired of drooling over the food by now but....yea, no.
For my meal I got something that I forgot the name of but it was awesome. Slightly spicy delicious broth, noodles, a bed of greens, and ground beef with awesome seasonings and shopped onions/carrots. I've never had anything like it, but it was practically my ideal dish haha. Meat AND noodles AND salad AND soup. You'd think I'd be tired of drooling over the food by now but....yea, no.
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Dinner! You know how packages of food never actually look like they do on the front picture? JAPANESE RAMEN DEFEATS THIS STEREOTYPE. It is EXACTLY like they show on the picture. Every detail. They give you a package of noodles, a package of dry seasoning, a package of thick paste (which is more seasoning that gives it that extra flavor, think like miso paste), a package of dried greens and pork, and a package containing three sheets of nori. HOW COOL. I was totally floored when I opened them all up. I have never before seen such a real bowl of instant ramen lol. When I took this picture, the ball of spinach hadn't unraveled yet, but it did eventually. Best bowl of instant ramen EVER.
I got back late to my hotel room in Machida and had a major panic attack. I had to pack all my belongings (which is a daunting chore, let me assure you. I have so much stuff after almost two months traveling abroad, it is unreal) and take them down to the nearest convenience store so the Yamato service they have here can hold them for me for the weekend while I travel to Osaka, Gifu, and Kyoto.
First, this Yamato service is AWESOME. Julia says foreigners are always surprised and impressed by this service, and rightly so. They will pick-up, hold, and deliver luggage for you for a minor fee. All you have to do is go to any convenience store, fill out a form telling where you want it delivered, what day, and what time, then drop off your luggage and pay. I had two giant very overweight suitcases and a super heavy loaded backpack that I dropped off to be held for two days and then taken to Shinjuku on Monday night, and I paid about $40 for them all! Unreal. So much stress and pain taken off my shoulders lol, you would not believe. Just having to think about lugging them all over Tokyo, having to find buses instead of subways, having to somehow get them on the Shinkansen and ride hours all over Japan, then bring them back to Tokyo, drag them all over Shinjuku to my hotel...nightmare. And wholly impossible. If there wasn't this Yamato service I would have just stayed in my hotel in Machida that's forsure haha.
Anyway my schedule as of now is to wake up at 5am tomorrow, make my way to Machida Station to take a subway to Shin-Yokohama where I can catch a Shinkansen train to Osaka. With my bag of snacks for the 3-hour train ride and my backpack of stuff for my weekend at the Ono household (Julia's house, but she has to stay in Tokyo to work on her thesis and to study for a test on Tuesday). Hatsue, Julia's mother, will be my host:) I haven't gotten to see her for years!!
First, this Yamato service is AWESOME. Julia says foreigners are always surprised and impressed by this service, and rightly so. They will pick-up, hold, and deliver luggage for you for a minor fee. All you have to do is go to any convenience store, fill out a form telling where you want it delivered, what day, and what time, then drop off your luggage and pay. I had two giant very overweight suitcases and a super heavy loaded backpack that I dropped off to be held for two days and then taken to Shinjuku on Monday night, and I paid about $40 for them all! Unreal. So much stress and pain taken off my shoulders lol, you would not believe. Just having to think about lugging them all over Tokyo, having to find buses instead of subways, having to somehow get them on the Shinkansen and ride hours all over Japan, then bring them back to Tokyo, drag them all over Shinjuku to my hotel...nightmare. And wholly impossible. If there wasn't this Yamato service I would have just stayed in my hotel in Machida that's forsure haha.
Anyway my schedule as of now is to wake up at 5am tomorrow, make my way to Machida Station to take a subway to Shin-Yokohama where I can catch a Shinkansen train to Osaka. With my bag of snacks for the 3-hour train ride and my backpack of stuff for my weekend at the Ono household (Julia's house, but she has to stay in Tokyo to work on her thesis and to study for a test on Tuesday). Hatsue, Julia's mother, will be my host:) I haven't gotten to see her for years!!