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! ;)

Japanese new year treat Osechi, and Ise shrine!

 Every year, I begin the first day with Japanese new year treat Osechi (おせち料理) with my family. Because typical family population in this country continue to shrink, most family is no longer cook a bunch of food in it themselves, instead they get it from department stores and so forth that offer a variety of them. Ranges from $100-$1,500 for a set, it all depends on how luxurious ingredients are, rather than the quantity. In this photo, I think it would be around $150. Once we celebrate new year, I hopped on my car with my family, driving to the southwest to one of the most famous Shrines in Japan.

 Looking from the window, we came across the pacific ocean along the express way. Shining from the east, the weather couldn't be better :)

 As we arrived, we were trapped with so many people coming to the shrine.  It wasn't surprising, considering the fact that it hosts around 500,000 prayers just in first three days of each year. Not all people are particularly religious, I believe. Many people come there to see their relatives, have drinks such as sake and hot meal in street stands along the way :)

 In a vast garden, there are woods, countless narrow paths, and even river. It's the best place to take a walk for the first day of the year! ;)

food, food, food!

 I've been under a huge pressure for the past several weeks, and sometimes I was really in need for getting out of everything, and head to a nice restaurant.  Like always, I love eat out for sushi. Sitting on a chair while sushi chefs behind the counter cook sushi, take care of whole fresh fish to cut, slice with care, then put them in the fridge. I always like every move sushi chefs do. And sushi itself...it was gorgeous!

 It came along with an egg custard dish chawan-mushi (茶碗蒸し). It looks like pudding, but it's a meal with Japanese soup dashi, a shrimp, a chopped chicken and Japanese herb in it.

 The next day came with B.L.T. sandwich in a cafe HARBS in a fancy district Roppongi. Long thick sliced bacons were well grilled, and its oily taste was the best combination with tomato and bread! Chatting with my friend, I also enjoyed a big portion of cake. (HARBS is a famous for its huge size cake)

 And that's not all: I joined a dinner party held nearby. I visited earlier so to help cook. He said he was going to cook a pot dish with pheasant from Shikoku island, and I made up my mind to cut variety of vegetables while he was making soup from the scratch. (The soup eventually took two hours to cook, for the record!)

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 As well as eating out, cooking myself is so much fun for me. Well... I cook too much,  I know it!
 Sure, we have plenty of annoying thing in our life, but as long as fine meals are there, I would be okay ;)

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 ;)