10-course Kaiseki cuisine, a traditional Japanese meal course :)

 At 25th floor of a fancy hotel, there is a cool Japanese restaurant. One day, my friend and I went to there to see what the food is like :)

 Started with a glass of sparkling wine, they serve colouful dish with seasonal ingredient and autumn leaves. Like many other traditional Kaiseki(懐石料理) dish, they also remind me of Autumn and upcoming winter.

Good thing about Kaiseki cuisine is that you can taste wide range of food, from sashimi to seasoned rice, and that's why I love it, so enjoyable :)

 Oh, I forgot to take photos of some other dish! XD

 Okay, let's take a walk before getting back to home.

 Early December is one of the best time to come to Japan. It's still not so cold, and autumn leaves are so fascinating! ;)

Going to "Sake Exchange Tokyo"!

 Unlike typical Japanese society, where alcohol play a big role in business meetings, festivals, and parties, my life goes well without it. But sometimes I miss the atmosphere of drinking in public, and that's exactly why I joined a fantastic workshop "Sake Exchange Tokyo" a couple nights ago.

 In this event, they serve six different sake along with dish. Each sake was paired with carefully chosen meal so that it enhances the taste of sake. It means we could enjoy not only sake, but also food :) A British professional man taught us the basic information about sake both in English and Japanese, then he told us how to make a best combination with sake and food.

 We enjoyed so many kind of sake on the evening that I almost fell asleep on the train coming back to home, haha.

breakfast with sweet plum, yogurt, sliced bread with avocado, and more :)

:)

Cooking food too much....as ever!

 I tend to stock things too much. In the small storage of my apartment, I always get at least a dozen of paper towel boxes, which is unnecessarily big number for a person living alone. I begin to feel anxious, however, once my stock comes down a dozen. Don’t ask me why. It just the way I am XD
Likewise, I tend to cook too much. I know, it covers a whole week of my consumption. And I can’t stop cooking once it starts, haha.

One-day-trip to Kamakura from Tokyo!

 One day in the late Autumn of 2017, my friend and I visited an old town Kamakura (鎌倉), located just one hour riding on a local train from Tokyo. Despite its convenient location, Kamakura is amazingly different from the huge metropolitan city Tokyo: the city centre is filled with cute tiny local restaurants as well as souvenir shops, deep forests behind the city sit just next to the Pacific Ocean. What’s more, fascinatingly sophisticated cafes are available like everywhere. But first, why don’t we just drop the train off at Kita-Kamakura (Northen Kamakura) station to start a casual trail hiking which lead us to a big statue of Buddha?

 On the narrow local way, we found a lot of temples here and there. In most cases, the admission fee was 200-300 yen, just a couple of dollars. Since Autumn leaves had still on the tree, fascinated us, we went to temples one by one, walking on the gardens and around.

 As we climbed up hills, we discovered an ocean view beyond trees. The air surrounding us wasn’t that cold, perhaps the temperature hit 10 degrees at that point. I always love those modest weather, you know :)

 So, here we are ;) If you pay additional fee, which is just for 20 yen,  you can make it inside the statue like we did :) You want to know what’s inside? Well....NOTHING XD

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 Okay, it’s time to have a nice meal. We found a local restaurant on a narrow street, and had a Shirasu (small, steamed white baby fish), soul food in Kamakura along with fresh Tuna. Soooo nice :)

 Before it gets dark, we strolled around the city centre, had some sweets while doing window shopping. It was truly a lovely day ;)

cooking blows my daily frustration :)

 It was Saturday when I was so exhausted from work, and I thought I need to create something good in this world. So I rushed to a local supermarket, bought a variety of vegetables, then head back to home. Within minutes, I stood the kitchen, began to cook. Two types of jams (banana with caramel sauce, and freshly harvested grape jam) comes first, then baked a bread. As I kept cooking  so many food and see them accumulated in the refrigerator, I felt deeply content. It reminds me of a famous spy film "Munich", which, in the story, the star actor cooked excessively as he felt frustrated chasing the targets. Well, for me, cooking is something fulfilling my heart :)

600km trip to northern region Toyama, late summer, 2017.

 Sometimes I need go far away from Tokyo to get the air. And in that cases, a northern countryside province Toyama is the best option to me. One day in the late September, my friend and I decided to take one-day-car-trip there.

 We hit the road at 8 o’clock in the morning, when the sun rising up from the distance mountains, long shadows on the ground made the landscape quite dramatic. Soon after the departure, I found my friend sleeping next to my seat. That wasn’t surprising, considering the fact that we had another super busy day yesterday, made us slept late in the evening. Before I get sleepy, I just need something sweet!

So that’s it XD I can’t go without sweets!! Well, the weather could never be better, don’t you think?!

 Immediately after getting the destination, I drove straight to my favorite sushi restaurant. For me, one of the most exciting things to get to the coastal place Toyama is having super fine sushi, which is quite different from traditional Tokyo-style “Edo-mae-sushi”. They have so many unique fish and shells in Toyama, and definitely I love them all !

 Okay, before moving to the other place, we had a small break at a local Starbucks along a canal. This café was once nominated to the world’s most beautiful Starbucks, and I have no doubt about this. Not only the café itself, but also the surrounding park is breathtaking with lots of birds flying over, people from all ages walking along the canal…everything is so peaceful. I can easily stay here for hours, but for now, we had to head to the other place!

One hour from the city centre of Toyama, there is an old remote mountainous village Gokayama (五箇山). Because of difficulty getting there, it’s not so popular tourist destination despite it’s a world heritage. Thanks to my car, we drive up the steep road to get there :)

 It seemed the temperature was around 10 degrees, which was astonishing compare to 28 degrees in Tokyo. Let’s get insde now..

 Usually they are three stareys buildings, and inside was rather dark but warm enough to play with a traditional instrument for a while, haha.

 With Buckwheat noodle with sliced bear meat, I was pretty satisfied to get back to home ;)