Category — Japan Trip 2008

Miyajima Island, Hiroshima, Himeji

We are finally at the last part of this Japan Trip series. This really turned out much longer than I thought it would. On the trip I was planning for just three short posts. But when I got home it was so hard to choose which pictures to share!

Without anymore delay, here we go…above were some pastry selections from one of those service areas that I told you about. This one was a restroom/snack/lunch stop. Free green tea as usual at these nicer rest stops.

Below is one of the stalls outside of the building. This young man sold all kinds of grilled or deep fried things – chicken, beef, fishcake, etc.

We had the asparagus bacon fishcake. Interesting taste…being hot off the grill, it kept our hands and stomach warm.

Then we went to go visit the Mazda car factory. Before going in to the actual assembly line area (sorry photos not allowed) we learned about the history of the company…

And got a glimpse of possible things to come.

The next day we went to visit the bridge at Iwakuni then moved on to Miyajima Island. To get to Miyajima Island we caught this ferry.

It’s the deer again – hold on to your papers!

And of course, the famous floating torii gate.

Our guide told us about some of the specialties in Hiroshima and I wanted try whatever I could find. So here we have a lunch of anago don (anago = conger/saltwater eel v.s. unagi = freshwater eel).

I also had some Hiroshima style okonomiyaki. This dish uses a thin kind of crepe like batter with vegetables, noodles, egg, and thinly sliced meat.

Because I had just eaten the anago don for lunch, I opted for the half order. Here’s a closeup…

Can’t forget about the dessert/snack specialty, Momiji manju.

I bought some of the cream/custard variety, so good!

After eating all of my Hiroshima foods, we went to visit the very important Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Park. Below is the former old Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall devastated during the atomic attack in 1945.

The Children’s Memorial in honor of leukemia victim Sadako Sasaki was very touching.

We all made some paper cranes to offer here and wish for peace.

In the museum we saw very large wall sized photos of the effects of the bomb.

I didn’t notice this until I uploaded my pictures but pay careful attention to the mountain range in the picture below and the one after it showing modern day Hiroshima from my hotel room.

I didn’t realize I was taking it from such a similar perspective. I’m glad the city has been able to recover and move on to become such an educational place to visit.

This evening we were on our own so we decided to do a little shopping at the Hondori Arcade.

We walked around the shops and streets for several hours then finally made our way back towards the hotel. There was another shopping area next door to our hotel so we grabbed a bite there at a tonkatsu restaurant.

I don’t know if you can tell but the picture above is actually supposed to have one more piece of tonkatsu in the middle. I was so hungry that I started eating before realizing I didn’t take a picture! To make up for it, here’s a close up…

And finally, I’ll finish this Japan Trip series with my favorite activity from our last fully guided day. A trip to Himeji Castle and a hike all the way up to the tip top of the castle. There was actually a lot of uphill walking just to get to the bottom floor of the castle.

We were told this was used in the making of the movie, “The Last Samurai” with Tom Cruise. I’ll have to watch it again to see if I can recognize any of the areas we walked through.

Made it!! There sure were a lot of stairs inside the castle – and steep ones too, almost like climbing a ladder!

But at least on the walk back down there were pretty trees to enjoy.

Top 6 things I will miss about Japan:

1. Easy access to so much good food
2. Strong work ethic of employees
3. Complimentary green tea everywhere you go
4. Japanese TV shows
5. Department stores with 10+ floors
6. Food, food, food!!!

Part 1: Ikebukuro, Asakusa, Ginza, Tsukiji
Part 2: Hakone, Mt. Fuji, Shizuoka, Nagoya
Part 3: Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara
Part 4: Awaji Island, Tokushima, Ritsurin Park, Kaiseki Dinner
Part 5: Miyajima Island, Hiroshima, Himeji

Are you ready for more? Here we go…. After visiting a sake brewery museum in the morning, we headed off to Awaji Island to enjoy a Japanese puppet play. We learned about how it takes three people to control one puppet (one for the head and arm, another for the other arm, and the last person for the legs). The play is in Japanese but if you read the summary before hand you can understand what’s going on. The gidayu narration and shamisen accompaniment to the puppet play also add a great element making the whole experience very enjoyable.

Next we moved on to the prefecture of Tokushima on Shikoku Island. Here we got to see the famous Awaodori Dancers perform. The women as well as men were all really great. It was kind of like the dancing at Hawaii bon dances but a little more enthusiastic. This and the puppet play were both very culturally interesting and entertaining. If you’re in the area, I’d definitely recommend it.

Food, yes – I know you are all waiting for the food pics. Here was our dinner at the hotel…sukiyaki.

At first when I heard it was a sukiyaki dinner, I thought…that’s good I guess. Simple and homey. But this was really so much more. For example, we started off with these little appetizers.

Then the waitress came and started cooking it at our table.

There were a lot of fresh ingredients and it was a big pot so we all ate a lot!

It also came with some tempura.

And fruit…

And some sweet potato ice cream. See the little pieces inside?

The next day we went to Ritsurin Park. A park or garden in Japan is very different from what you think of in Hawaii. Normally when I think of a park, it’s just grass and some trees. In Japan it is beautifully landscaped gardens with manicured trees, ponds, bridges…everything just very elegant.

Here are some koi fish which my other half despises. He grew up with a big koi pond in his backyard, which he was responsible for cleaning every other Saturday. I guess I’d get nasty flashbacks too if I had to do that. But I didn’t, so I enjoyed looking at these pretty fish.

Magnolia trees, so beautiful.

And finally, sakura.

Here was one of our many bus snacks, it’s called taruto. It is a sponge cake roll with azuki bean paste in the middle. It’s supposed to look like the hiragana character “no”.

Both of our guides were really good about buying snacks for us to try in each new region we went to. If an area was well known for a product or specific snack they would let us know and often give us some to try.

I have to show you this, there was this man selling towels with geisha designs on them. The thing is, when you heat up the towel – I guess in the shower or onsen – the clothes on the geisha disappear leaving, yup you guessed it! I have it on video, but since this isn’t a rated R blog I can’t show it here, sorry! He was showing us by heating it up with an iron. Normally I’m really much more of a feminist…but this was pretty funny.

The hotel this night was a traditional ryokan. It was a first for me to walk in to a hotel room and not have a bed. Normally our routine is walk in, drop our bags, and flop on the bed. But this wasn’t bad. We took a look around, had a seat and found some snacks and tea there for us.

View outside our window.

Snacks, yum.

For dinner we were having kaiseki again like at Mt. Fuji. This one had so much food though, I could barely finish.

If you look at the white and blue plate in the picture above – the one with the two pieces of fish, lemon slice, and green looking ball – that was fugu (pufferfish). That was pretty neat to try…a little scary at first though since as you probably know, if it isn’t prepared properly you can die from its poison.

The other exotic dish I had was jellyfish. You can see this in the picture below in the little green dish. Until someone told me what it was, I totally thought it was pickled daikon or some other crunchy vegetable. To me that’s what it tasted like.

I have to show you a picture of one other dish. I was eating this soup, tasted good…nothing out of the ordinary. Then all of a sudden I felt kind of a scratchy feeling on my tongue when eating one of the “noodles”. I looked down at my spoon and what do I see but eyes staring back up at me! Eeek! These little fish tasted fine, it was just really weird that I was munching away on them without a clue that they weren’t noodles…that’s the part that weirded me out.

Lesson: Always check if your noodles have eyes.

And finally, a simple and refreshing dessert plate.

Thanks for hanging with me, just one more post to go to finish up this Japan Trip series!

Part 1: Ikebukuro, Asakusa, Ginza, Tsukiji
Part 2: Hakone, Mt. Fuji, Shizuoka, Nagoya
Part 3: Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara
Part 4: Awaji Island, Tokushima, Ritsurin Park, Kaiseki Dinner
Part 5: Miyajima Island, Hiroshima, Himeji

Part 3: Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara

While waiting for our bullet train at Nagoya station we had some time to check out a department store called JR Nagoya Takashimaya. This was a pretty typical Japanese department store. Located within the station, it offered 15 floors of shopping and food! The floor plan went something like this:

Starting from the 13th floor and going down…

13 – Restaurants
12 – Restaurants
11 – Books, Music, DVDs
10 – Kimonos, Jewelry, Clocks, Watches
9 – Household Goods, Beds & Linen
8 – Men’s Wear, Babies, Children
7 – Men’s Wear
6 – Ladies’ Wear
5 – Ladies’ Wear
4 – Ladies’ Wear
3 – Cosmetics, Handbags
2 – High End Ladies’ Wear/Accesories
1 – Ladies’ Accessories
B1 – Food: Sushi, Bentos, Japanese & Western Confections, Tea, Local Specialties
B2 – Food: Meat, Fish, Produce, Drinks, Groceries

Every time we went to a department store we would basically ride the escalators from the first floor all the way up to the top, getting a feel for every floor on the way. If there was anything interesting we’d stop for a bit to browse but continue on as we usually didn’t have very much time. At the top we’d then catch an elevator all the way down to the basement food level for me to check out.

The picture up top is from the Basement 1 level of the JR Nagoya Takashimaya Department Store. Here are a couple others shots from that floor:

This floor goes on and on with cases full of delicious looking foods like these. Anyways, checking the clock it was time to go and meet back with our group to catch the shinkansen (bullet train).

On board we were served this very nice bento box.

Our trip wasn’t very long and we had just enough time to eat and sit back a little.

Here’s what it looked like inside the bullet train. Reminds me of a nice airplane, but cleaner and a little more spacious.

We got off at Kyoto, an area of many beautiful temples and shrines. One of the first we went to was the very popular (and crowded) Kinkaku-ji Golden Pavilion. Very beautiful!

Later in the afternoon we made it back to our hotel for check in. I haven’t shown any of our hotel rooms yet so here’s a pic of our room at the Kyoto Rhiga Royal Hotel.

We had the night free so after a quick rest we decided to walk over to the train station for some shopping and dinner. The Kyoto Tower was very handy in showing us the way toward the station.

There was a lot of shopping at this place. So much so that it was a little confusing for me. There was an underground shopping area, then an attached – I don’t know – some kind of other shopping area, then an attached large department store. I forget how big this department store was…I want to say around 12 floors. Dinner was on the restaurant level of the department store and I had a simple sashimi and tempura dinner.

The next morning we woke up and went to breakfast in our hotel. The restaurant that we chose was located on the top floor so we got to have a pretty nice view of Kyoto from up there.

This is kind of random, but the toast was really good. You can’t tell from the photo but this was that really thick cut bread…inch to inch and a half thick.

I tried half of it with plain Hokkaido butter and the other with both butter and jam. Both sides were excellent!

This day we took our bus to Nara to visit some temples and shrines. I had no idea there would be so many deer there! I’m glad they were friendly.

Lunch was at a shopping arcade…

At the very end of this arcade there was a stand selling fresh, and I mean FRESH, mochi. This was the best, softest, kinako mochi I’ve ever had in my life!

Next up was Heian-Jingu, a shinto shrine.

Many of these temples and shrines had large and impressive gardens. This one also had a neat looking bridge.

Just outside of this shrine we saw a Japanese dog walking around. Throughout the trip, whenever we saw other dogs we always started to miss our dog who was at home with my dad.

But as we do with all our trips, we take a picture of our dog before we go so that we can look at him on our camera while we’re away. Here’s the picture we had to remind us of him while in Japan.

Dinner time! These were my favorites from the buffet at the Kyoto Rhiga Royal Hotel.

I had about 2 or 3 plates of that sushi and sashimi.

Coming up in Part 4, we will continue to head south nearing the end of our adventure!

Part 1: Ikebukuro, Asakusa, Ginza, Tsukiji
Part 2: Hakone, Mt. Fuji, Shizuoka, Nagoya
Part 3: Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara
Part 4: Awaji Island, Tokushima, Ritsurin Park, Kaiseki Dinner
Part 5: Miyajima Island, Hiroshima, Himeji

Part 2: Hakone, Mt. Fuji, Shizuoka, Nagoya

I hope you guys have a good Internet connection cause this post has a lot of pictures! First off on our way from Tokyo to Hakone we made a rest stop at one of the many service areas along the way. Normally when I think rest stop, it’s kind of like ewww. But the ones that we went to in Japan have nice bathrooms, free green tea, good food, and lots of snacks! It was pretty cold over at this place so we first tried a taiyaki. This was a nice and warm slightly sweet pancake type exterior filled with custard. Here’s what it looks like up close and on the inside…

The warm cake and custard filling were very satisfying on a cold morning.

Next he wanted to try something from the neighboring stall.

This was a kind of grilled mochi. He really liked this steaming hot, shoyu flavored mochi. It was pretty good but all I had in my head was – I want another fish! But seeing as we just had breakfast an hour before this, I figured I better pace myself.

Well good thing I didn’t go for that second custard taiyaki because soon after we got back on the bus we were given a snack.

These were so good!! Crispy wafers with cream in the middle. Mine had a regular cream filling, some others had chocolate in the middle. On the wafer it says they are called Gaufrette.

Weather started to get a bit rainy but we made our way to take a boat cruise across Lake Ashino-ko.

The boat was not too big, but it was comfortable and smooth.

After crossing the lake we visited Owakudani, an area located in Hakone. It is known for its sulfer fumes and hot springs. You can kind of see the fumes rising in the picture below.

In what seemed like a couple seconds, the weather turned into this! I almost blew away in all that crazy wind and snow!

I pretty much ran into the building dodging people’s flipped inside out umbrellas. When I got in I found my way to the restaurant where a seat was saved for me. I haven’t shown a Japanese menu yet so here is one below.

Most of the menus I came across in Japan were only in Japanese, with some pictures. I’d basically try and read the katakana and hiragana to get the gist…then point to the picture when ordering. But this was a rare menu that had English translations for the dish name. The prices were a little high but it was worth it – the food was really good.

I had the Pork Katsudon. This really hit the spot – some tender breaded pork over rice with egg and sauce on top.

After a little more driving, we finally made it to our hotel in the Mt. Fuji area. On the down side we weren’t able to see a complete view of Fuji san. But on the up side, I got my snow! And if you know me, you know how I love going to pretty places that snow – this definitely qualifies!

At our Mt. Fuji hotel we had a kaiseki dinner. This is a traditional type meal made up of many little courses. I had been looking forward to this since I always see shows about it on TV. But I was always worried that since it was made up of such small portions that I would be hungry after. With this particular kaiseki dinner I ended not stuffed, but very much satisfied.

Above is the setting that we sat down to. They brought several more dishes in addition to these.

While watching my Japanese shows, another thing that concerned me were the exotic looking dishes that come in a kaiseki dinner. But these weren’t bad. There were a couple unusual dishes, but everything tasted pretty familiar.

The next morning I woke up extra early to play in the snow and take some pictures.

After getting my fill of snow and frozen fingers, I went inside for the breakfast buffet. This hotel had a pretty long line up of choices. I made one plate of Western foods and one of Japanese.

I also took some tofu…

and later, a second helping of hotcakes – I love these little guys!

Packed up to leave the Mt. Fuji area, we drove through Shizuoka Prefecture and stopped at a strawberry orchard. This was great. You got to go into these little greenhouses and basically eat strawberries to your heart’s content. Just bend down and pick the juiciest looking ones that you can find!

Very sweet!

After eating strawberries and picking up some strawberry omiyage (I left with some strawberry gaufrette), we stopped at another one of those service areas. This time it was a lunch stop and we ordered up some food from this totally efficient vending machine.

You look at some pictures on the side, look for the matching name/number on the machine, and purchase a ticket. At this place all you have to do next is wait for your number to be called in Japanese. Please note – at many other places we went to, we had to give them our ticket first.

We shared a mini ramen and mini curry. These were both good. We opted for the mini size since we had just eaten a mountain of strawberries. Oh, and also because we both had like three plates of food each at breakfast! (Thank goodness we did a lot of walking on this tour!)

Next up was another fun activity. We went to visit a green tea farm and factory. While it wasn’t currently tea picking season yet, we got to walk through their green tea bushes and take a peek into the processing factory.

At the end of the tour, our group went to the omiyage shop and bought all kinds of green tea products. I bought a can of green tea gaufrette (yes, I did just get a box of strawberry flavored ones from the strawberry orchard).

The two of us also shared a green tea ice cream cone. Now in Hawaii, green tea flavored ice cream is pretty popular. In fact it’s my favorite flavor. But I have to say it tastes nothing like this. This one is WAY better! The thing is that in Hawaii it doesn’t really taste like green tea. To me it’s more like a light chocolate or coffee type taste. The one here (and we found it a couple more times throughout the trip) was without a doubt GREEN TEA ice cream. You could really taste the tea flavor which I loved!

After finally making it to Nagoya, we checked into our hotel then went out for dinner – the buffet at Westin Nagoya Castle. The food was good and there were so many sakura themed dishes. Here we have sakura tea…

steak with sakura sauce – so tender and tasty!

and a cake with sakura blossom.

This portion of the trip was really fun with the snow, strawberry orchard, and all the good food as usual. Stay tuned for Part 3 where we’ll be starting off on a bullet train to Kyoto!

Part 1: Ikebukuro, Asakusa, Ginza, Tsukiji
Part 2: Hakone, Mt. Fuji, Shizuoka, Nagoya
Part 3: Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara
Part 4: Awaji Island, Tokushima, Ritsurin Park, Kaiseki Dinner
Part 5: Miyajima Island, Hiroshima, Himeji

Part 1: Tokyo – Ikebukuro, Ueno, Asakusa, Ginza, Tsukiji

Aloha everyone, I’m back! Recipes will be returning here soon I promise. But first, here is part 1 of my trip pics that many of you have been asking about.

We started out our 13 day adventure departing Honolulu for Narita. We traveled with a local tour group based in Hawaii. I just have to say that this was a great group of people. Everyone was so friendly and courteous to each other, we were very fortunate to be in this specific tour group.

The picture up top is Ikebukuro at night. It was very easy to get to, just a couple minutes walk from our hotel.

Dinner on our first night was a buffet inside our Sunshine City Prince Hotel.

The next day we spent a little time around Ueno. We quickly walked through Ameyokocho then a couple of us ventured off to find Ueno Park and some early blooming sakura trees. So pretty!

Later we went on to visit Sensoji (Asakusa Kannon Temple).

Past that entry way with the large lanterns are streets filled with souvenir shops and more importantly food stalls!

I love kinako mochi…

This other one was okay, but not better than the kinako!

And these mini cakes filled with azuki bean paste are great little snacks while strolling around.

Next up, two hot off the grill senbei for 100 yen…

Saw this interesting sign outside a McDonalds. I didn’t try it, I wonder if it uses any Hawaiian flavors?

After this, more food…lunch at a tempura restaurant.

Started off with chawanmushi and miso soup.

Then on to the nice and crispy tempura. There was a selection of shrimp, fish, and vegetables.

For dinner on our second night we went out with friends from Tokyo. They picked us up at our hotel and we caught the subway to Ginza.

We did some window shopping, I especially liked the Mitsukoshi Department Store basement food level. I could easily spend a week tasting my way through the many food counters in there. Check out some of their salads below.

After that we caught another subway train to Tsukiji for our awesome sushi dinner at Tsukiji Sushiko.

This wasn’t my drink, but I did taste it…very smooth.

Seafood salad, light and refreshing.

We shared some of this delicious grilled fish.

And of course the sushi. We each had our own platter so that was all mine!

This was easily one of my favorite nights of the trip. We enjoyed a wonderful adventure through Japan’s subway system, great dinner, and fun with friends. I can’t wait to go back to Tokyo!

Part 1: Ikebukuro, Asakusa, Ginza, Tsukiji
Part 2: Hakone, Mt. Fuji, Shizuoka, Nagoya
Part 3: Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara
Part 4: Awaji Island, Tokushima, Ritsurin Park, Kaiseki Dinner
Part 5: Miyajima Island, Hiroshima, Himeji