cooking by myself ;)

 Starting my day with a couple of great coffee, some breads, and other stuff if I want. Cool :) The quality of each breakfast determines my entire day, therefore I have to eat as delicious foods as possible to boost myself :) Given the fact that all I ate at breakfast was tea, it's an incredible progress. It's funny to seek my pictures taken within a year. At first I began to shoot my breakfast for nothing in particular reason. As I kept doing it, I realized the increase amount of it as well as the quality. I was a person who really didn't like eating breakfast, or even smell it. If I take some tea, that's fine. If I had some leftovers in my fridge, then eat them at lunch. However, I liked eating. Lunch and dinner weren't enough for me, so I started to have a breakfast every day.

Later on, I became more frequent cock. Eating out itself is enjoyable for me, with a unique food and interior, I like everything. But if they are closed, what am I going to do? I do it myself ;) I prefer to cook myself so that I can eat better one anytime I want, my all-time favorite, like midnights or 5 o'clock in the early mornings. We don't have to be able to cook, I personally think so. There are many people working too hard to cook, those go to restaurants almost every day. I'm absolutely opposite, I like creating something rather than prepared, ordinary ones. And I want to take care of myself. That idea reminds me of my friends, most of whom are creators, designers for web sites, musicians, and chefs. I simply like creating and crafting by my own hands as well as looking at someone doing it. It's just beautiful and breathtaking, I always respect them deeply.

  Such idea even brought me to the Central America to see coffee farms. We probably don't have to know it, the process, how they plant, grow, harvest and so on. We might be nothing to do with it. But I wanted to understand what it's like, so I just followed my desire. Like my last trip there, I go into their kitchens whenever I travel. The South East Asia, of course, Middle East and Africa. I joined to cook together to learn Swahili food in Nairobi. Yes, I definitely like it and keep on doing it for the time being :)

Outing, outing, outing!

 These days I have a lot of things to tackle on, and every now and then I remember my hometown. Since it was a three day holiday last weekend, I went back to Nagoya to take rests. The home I grew up, the restaurant I once worked for, forest and a tiny mountain in front of my home, everything is still there and it helped me stay an ease.

 The last day was going back to Tokyo. Since highways usually get heavy traffic jams on holiday, I took a first bullet train in the morning. Thanks to the Sun coming up earlier, I could touch cool air on the way to the station.

 Here, it's between the sea and a lake in Shizuoka Prefecture, I used to come here to fishing with my neighbor when I was a kid :)

 After getting back to my home in Tokyo, I went to a Korean restaurant to have a lunch. They are always good, hot and spicy ;) I think I ate too much haha.

 Walking in a park in Shinjuku is really fun, so I went there after eating Korean. Some cherry blossoms started to bloom, and many people gathered around them to take pictures. I guess it'll take two weeks to become full bloom. Last time I visited this park at the time of full bloom, I had to wait for entering there for an hour due to so many people. In this year 2014, I'll be small unknown place to see it ;)

 Spring is gonna be soon ;)

Visiting an "all $1 sushi" restaurant.

 I met a friend from Kenya a couple days ago and we discuss what we eat for dinner. I thought it might be wonderful to bring her to this kind of casual style sushi restaurant, so we went :)  Let me show you what it's like and how it works ;)

 Although many people consider sushi as expensive food, it's not always like that. We have a plenty restaurants for budget friendly sushi restaurants here and there. I chose "Sushi-ro", one of the most famous and popular ones which serves most sushi about $1.

 Since it's cheap and children oriented, you usually have to line up to wait for a while. Just reserve with a booking machine, then it gives you a paper that tells expected time for waiting.

 After ten-minute waiting, they took us a table which can seat six people for maximum. Since we were only three, we put our jackets beside us and began to eat. They have screens for each seat so we can order with it, not only choose from conveyor belts.

 There are many meals besides sushi, and that's the biggest reason why I chose here to come. If you don't like sushi, then eat other meals such as deep fried chicken, french fried, Japanese noodle "udon (about udon, see this post)", etc. Regardless to say, there are so many fish for sushi, and wen can't remember or tell everything. So what are we gonna do? 

We switch the language :) To tell the truth, I didn't know we could change it, perhaps they've introduced recently.

 Wow, it seems to work well :D Now we can select from several categories from gorgeous yet a bit expensive sushi to desserts like chocolate cakes.

 The funny thing is that even when you order sushi by yourself, they flow it on the conveyor in front of your table. So keep on feeling comfortable until it comes. Once your sushi approach to your seat, the beep starts with the machine voice that tells you about it. But how can we find our own sushi from the others? There are a bunch of them on it. Actually, it's quite easy to find: each seat has a color, and my seat was yellow at that time. You can find other colors like green, silver and such when you look around the restaurant.

 You see the yellow on my table, it's written in Japanese and colored, so you won't get confused :)

The ordered sushi comes with a yellow labeled stand. Don't take anything other colors, it's for someone's :)

 One thing I always do: I prefer to order this kind of gunkan style sushi. You can find it on conveyor belt thought, you have better order it because those black seaweeds easily get damp. Most people enjoy its fresh texture when we eat it, so don't take something left for a long time, just ask them to make fresh one ;) The word gunkan is from warship by the way, the shape looks like it.

 Tea, sweet and sour sliced gingers are complimentary, I usually take too much, haha.

 As I told you on top of this article, you can find many other foods. I took some deep fried chickens and potatoes to share with others.

 When you're satisfied, push the button to call for the charge. They soon come and count how much it is. It's pretty easy, isn't it? I frequently eat sushi both in my house and outside. And I can live only eating sushi 365 days a year. However, I don't afford to get great sushi on a daily basis, since good sushi easily hit $100 or above for lunch or dinner. When I want to enjoy it casually, I go to this kind of restaurant and that day was only $25 for three people. Considering the fact I spent $30 last time I ate sushi, it was way cheaper for me ;)

A snowy day and sushi.

 "It's been a while since I visited the sushi restaurant last time." As I opened up the entrance door, I thought myself. It was mid afternoon when I came in, and there were no one inside. "Oh, it's you, I've been waiting for you to come." The chef wearing Japanese traditional clothes showed up from the backyard. "I just got back from Central America last week and thought it's a good idea to taste some great sushi here." I answered him while sitting back in one of the chairs on the counter table.

 We chatted a lot of topics  from my journey to Central American countries to my neighbor farms. Before I paid for the lunch, he took me a plastic bag filled with fish. "Here, it's for your dinner." He smiled.  I promised him to visit again soon, then left there with waving my hands.

To this day, Tokyo is too huge and busy city for me. If I didn't have my iPhone, I couldn't have gotten right trains to the destinations. So many different trains, and so many people here and there. But I'm staying in here for now.

 Okay, I'll start from right here :)