Day 8: Leaving Yamanouchi/Shibu Onsen to Tokyo

Breakfast @ Kokuya Ryokan

Spread of traditional Japanese breakfast, including the best item of them all: onsen tamago – a soft-boiled egg cooked in the onsen. It was like another kaiseki – a stomach stretching exercise given I had just recovered from last night’s! Why must every meal include miso soup, rice, pickles and green tea… :)

Menu as follows:

1. Slice of yam with local miso
2. Broiled salmon
3. Vegetable salad
4. Cooked radish with miso
5. Half boiled egg (boiled it in our hot spring.)
6. Boiled local-tofu with vegetable and chicken dumpling
7. Steamed rice
8. Miso soup
9. Vegetables – pickles.

The Low-Down: Really filling, surprisingly light despite the soup + rice. I think I'm still more of a western breakfast girl though (unless its -10degrees). 7/10

Photography around Shibu Onsen
We then explored the town taking photos before making our way to our next stop – Tokyo. Macro-ing God’s creation with a dusting of rain drops and fog is one of the best ways to get your mind crystal clear and unstress.


Having made it back to Nagano, we had 40 minutes to kill before the Shinkansen to Tokyo. We stopped over at a quasi-americanesque diner called "Beck's"... because Dee had a craving for toasted sandwiches...

Lunch: Beck's Coffee Cafe

Location: Opposite JR station in Nagano
Food:
1. Toasted sandwiches - Both particularly pleasing, bread was soft but toasted (except Clara's sandwich was incorrectly assembled with the grill lines on the INSIDE... oops). A slight japanese twist, eg. mine had mustard and mayonnaise and pepper along with the ham and cheese.
2. Mini Tiramisu - YUM.
3. The Coffee - Not surprisingly, the let down. It came with extras... a black blob which could've been an unmelted coffee granule (it should've been fresh espresso anyhow) or, more likely, a bug. It might have had legs. Anyway. I fished that out, and near the end of my cup I also found FLUFF! *sigh*

Final score: 6.5/10 despite the coffee, which is probably a one-off. I'm probably being a bit harsh, but I'm scoring a toasted sandwich at a try-hard Starbucks!!

Character Street, Tokyo Station
After checking in we headed to Character St, an underground “street” full of character shops. Too bad Clara forgot how to get there (from last year) & we wandered a little lost for a while.
There's individual shops dedicated to Snoopy, Hello Kitty, Lego, Ultraman, An-pan-man, Tomica (which makes the jap equivalent of matchbox cars)... the list goes on.
The only thing that was slightly strange: In every store there were 10% tourists, 90% middle aged businessmen in suits.

Dinner: Katsugen

Location: Kitchen street, Yaesu Underground Shopping Mall.
Food:
1. Katsudon (fillet)
2. Lady's Don

BEST. KATSUDON. IN. MY. LIFE.
I remember thinking "Oh I get it now!! This is what it's meant to be like. DING!"
Seriously mouth watering. Thick piece of pork, not too skinny but no lashings or chunks of fat, thick maybe 3mm of batter which wasn't falling apart despite being cooked in an omelette. Fresh egg. Mostly cooked, some gooey bits. Rice was flavoured.
You know a tonkatsu restaurant's good when there's a cute couple, 4 businessmen, and 6 geriatrics who have reserved a table together for dinner.
You can refill your cabbage - bottomless as there was a man walking around with a basket to serve you!
The miso soup had mini clams in them (size of of your fingernails). Tasty.

Not cheap, not hideously expensive, but I may never have the fortune of coming across katsudon so good again. 10/10.