Day 12 Rain Rain Go Away

Fun fact, I forgot to pack an umbrella. Silly I know, seeing as how I knew I was coming to a country where June is their rainy season. I also refuse to buy one of those frilly, lacy things that Japanese women call umbrellas for the ungodly sum of 900 yen (roughly $7.25). Secretly I love those umbrellas, I just don't want to haul it home. But our hotel will let you borrow a very nice umbrella whenever you want. Thanks Intercontinental! That's a very nice perk when the weather has looked like this for the last 2 days:

Love being up in the clouds

Obviously the answer to more rain is more shopping and more sushi! But this time the good sushi.

Chutoro, fatty salmon (salmon with blow-torch crisped skin drizzled with mayo and green onions), and unagi (freshwater eel, blow-torch caramelized sauce)

Poop emoji book in Japanese

Hair drying glove?

Ear pick? At least it has cute animals on the top.

Adorable miniature animal containers to carry your sauces to and fro

For dinner, Ethan and I decided to head out to the Ramen Museum to try different types of famous ramen from around the country. They have 9 different ramen restaurants that are scattered around a replica street from 1958 Japan. That was the year that the first instant ramen was invented. Now their website advertises that there are sample size bowls available to allow the guest to try many different types of the noodle dish. What I thought would be a couple bites of noodles, and maybe a 1/2 cup of broth, was in fact a very nearly full sized bowl of ramen. I guess the prices reflect the bigger than anticipated size of the food, but they were again more than I was expecting. Each bowl was 550 - 800 yen. So not terrible pricing, but the price coupled with the size of the bowls was pretty prohibitive in trying the many many types of ramen. Between E and I, we were able to share 4 bowls of the sample size and one giant gyoza each. We would have loved to try more, but we were literally stuffed!

Salt broth with pork. This shop, Shina Soba-ya, uses a special wheat flour to make their noodles. And the chicken that is used to make the broth are raised by the shop master himself. There are over 30 ingredients, all specially sourced, to make this ramen special.

Same shop as above, but the soy broth also with pork, This was both E and my favorite from this shop.

Sumire ramen. This shop has been called the most famous miso shop in Japan. They specialize in a rich, miso broth and have Hokkaido style noodles which are slightly thick and curvy.

Sumire again, but with a soy (maybe soy and miso?) broth. This was my favorite! It was so rich and satisfyingly salty, lol.

HUGE gyoza. See my phone in the upper right for comparison.

Day 11 Rainy rainy day

It's not much fun when it rains on vacation. It's really a bummer when you can't even go to the movies because they're all in Japanese! Hopefully Jurassic World is still in theaters when we get back home. Though the rain wasn't stopping these kids from going on their canoeing field trip!

For lunch today I decided to try something called monja? It's technically monjayaki, monja is slang, and is similar to the okonomiyaki that we already ate. Check that out in this post here. You get a bowl full of ingredients that you mix together, then cook on the grill top. However, this batter isn't really a batter, it's more like a liquid that gels up the longer it's cooked. I chose to eat the pork and kimchi monja, and i have to say that it really wasn't my cup of tea. First off, the umami flavor was missing. For having such savory ingredients like pork and kimchi the dish was mostly sweet. Secondly, it kind of looked like I was playing momma bird and feeding baby birds if you get what I'm saying. And finally, this is just a personal preference, but I really dislike gelled foods (Jello, pudding, bananas, weird slimy tofu nuggets, etc) and this was definitely like gel. Sorry Japan, not your best dish!

Sorry, yes, this IS the most appetizing photo I could take of the monja

Dinner was much better because we had more conveyor belt sushi. I'm not sure of the name, but it was on the first floor of the World Porters mall.  This was our 2nd restaurant and I have to say that I prefer the 1st place better. This wasn't bad, but the quality and freshness is better at Numaza-Kou in Queen's Square.

This is supposed to be the 3 grades of tuna, meguro, chutoro and otoro, but as you can see from the picture, there isn't much variance in color or fat content. Like I said, not bad, but not great either. The piece on the left should be more red, the middle should be pink, and the right should be pale pink.

After dinner I found an adorable open miniature bathroom for children. There's just a half-sized wall separating it from the entrance to the men's and women's bathroom, I guess so you can supervise while giving your kid independence. Everything was so small though!

No bidet for the tiny humans.

Our after dinner cocktail indeed came from a can, and was an alcoholic pineapple soda. 9%!

Day 10 Sankeien Gardens in the Daylight

Last Friday, E and I spent the evening biking through the heart of Yokohama to a beautiful Japanese Garden where we watched fireflies light up a little valley. I thought it was beautiful and peaceful, but if I'm going to be honest, I was underwhelmed with the amount of fireflies. But I went back to the Sankeien Gardens to see the park in the daylight. While I was there, I got a little firefly education from an awesome park guide.

He told me that there are 2 main types of fireflies here in Japan, the Genji and Heike. They are thought to be named after 2 warring clans from 1185.  I guess it's appropriate that the Genji variety are larger, and brighter, because they won the war. It's folklore that the souls of the samurai that fell in battle inhabit the fireflies. Children are taught to not catch or hurt the bugs out of respect for the samurai souls. 

I was also told that firefly larvae need clean river beds or rice paddies with mineral rich water to grow. Because of the increasing water pollution here in Japan, it is becoming increasingly rare to see these beautiful creatures in their natural habitats, especially near urban areas. In fact, there's a firefly nursery in Tokyo that has created a greenhouse complete with an artificial stream to breed fireflies, and so people can enjoy them indoors. Knowing that it's rare to see these little critters where were are, I feel privileged to have seen any at all!

The park is so much bigger in the daylight! They had so much of it blocked off for the firefly night, that it probably only took us 15 - 20 minutes to walk through the whole thing. It took me almost 3 hours to take everything in today! The guide recommended an hour for both the inner and outer gardens, but I took my time and a couple breaks (it was really hot!). The original garden was fairly sparse, but since the war they've been planting trees and now it looks like a forest. Most of the buildings are not original. They were moved here throughout the last century. A lot of the original buildings were destroyed during the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 or World War II.

Lotus flowers

These are a variety of hydrangea and are the prettiest baby blue color

Example of a building's foundation that was destroyed in the Kanto Earthquake

Absolutely an urban oasis

Creeping apricot trees. The branches are supported by crutches.

Where the fireflies come out to play

Japanese farmhouses built in 1735 were not designed for 5'9" women.

Steps? Try a near vertical ladder without rungs. Damn these were steep.

The farmhouse. The steps led up to the attic. 

Three story pagoda, built in 735. What?!? Moved from Kyoto in 1914. That's so old I can't even fathom it. Homer (the poet, not the Simpson) was alive in 730.

You know after walking around in the heat for 3 hours, I WAS HUNGRY! Lunch was:d

Corndog! Loved the convenient ketchup/mustard duo.

Then for dinner we hit up some kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi for an appetizer.

Sushi appetizer. These are our favorites so far. Fatty tuna, tuna roll, and fatty salmon. Guess we're just a bunch of fatties! But they're sooo yummy!

Then we headed next door to Ippudo which is indeed a chain restaurant, but consistently serves some of the best ramen in Tokyo. They only have 3 things on the menu, but they do those 3 things extremely well (not including sides and a seasonal special). The gyoza are to die for and the noodles are cooked perfectly in a rich, but not too rich broth. I've now been here twice and still want more!

Spicy pork ramen from Ippudo, one of the best ramen shops in Tokyo

Garlic pork ramen

Day 9 Yokohama Chinatown

Today I was brave and took the subway all by myself! I can officially say that it was easy, I did not get lost, and I will do it again! It's a little intimidating trying to navigate a town when 75% of the signs are in Japanese.

I took the specialized Yokohama Baystars car to the stadium station.

The Baystars are Yokohoma's baseball team. 

Nautical subway art. I appreciate the depiction of the captian. It looks like a nose!

In general, the subway is much cleaner than other subways I've been on. NYC subway stations are filthy and smell like old pee and there are rats. Not so much here in Japan, everything is very tidy.

I was riding the subway to Yokohama's Chinatown. It has been around for about 150 years, and is the largest Chinatown in all of Japan and is one of the largest in the world.

Panda-monium was going in full force here. All the pandas were so cute, I wanted to bring it all home with me!

Panda toe socks! It was hard not to leave with these. However, they're Asian foot sized, so there's a 0% chance of them fitting my feet.

There were other cute things too.

These keychains were sooo fluffy and soft!

Cat store!

Dog necklace

Wittle piggies.

Then there's the food!

This vendor sold various types of pork dumplings. They were cheap and delicious!

This restaurant specialized in Peking Duck. This particular whole duck costs $65.

Sesame balls

Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and filled with warm red bean paste. They're warm and sweet. Best sesame ball I ever had.

Rum raisin Kit-Kat

Wasabi Kit-Kat

Fresh Lychee fruit

Roasted Chesnuts

My lunch!

On Saturday I had some really yummy grilled eggplant. I told E, "I really want to find some place that serves a spicy eggplant dish. I don't know if it exists, but that's what I want to eat!" The food here has been good, but I'm overwhelmed by all the sweet things. It seems that everything has sugar in it! If you know me, you know that I like my spicy foods. In fact, I brought my own mini bottle of Frank's Red Hot sauce with me on this trip! Also, I've been having a hard time finding a dish that's abundant with veggies. They're stingy with any veggie that isn't cabbage or bean sprouts. 

As I was walking around Chinatown, I was keeping my eye out for anything that looked like eggplant on the visual menus (in front of almost every restaurant). I went down a little alleyway and Voila! something that resembled eggplant. I went in, sat down, and was handed a menu in Japanese and Chinese, no English, and no pictures. So i whipped out my translator app, and found out that nasu is the Japanese word for eggplant. When the waiter came round for my order, I asked if he spoke English, to which he shook his head. So I said "Nasu?" He kind of shrugged. I tried to get him to go outside with me so I could point to what I wanted. He refused. So I said "Nasu?" again. He went back in the kitchen, presumably to get a wooden spoon to shoo out the confused American. But he came back 10 minutes later with a plate full of delicious looking eggplant! I took one bite and was in heaven! I found spicy eggplant!! It was simply glorious. When I told E about how I ordered lunch, he was shocked that a) my sad attempt to order food actually worked and b) that I got exactly what I wanted by only using 1 word to order. I was pretty shocked myself, admittedly.

After lunch I wandered around the various stores and found 2 beautiful shrines.

For dinner we had tonkatsu. Basically it's fried pork. I had poin loin, and E had cutlets. We both had fried prawns. The meal is typically served with shredded cabbage, rice and miso soup. Our miso soup had tiny little mussels swimming in the bottom of our bowls (not actually swimming, just flavoring the broth). They were about the size of a fingernail.

Beverage of the day was a melon cream soda. Not bad, but probably won't miss this back in the states either.