Day 13: Sapporo Day 2: Ishiya Chocolate Factory + Sapporo Beer Museum

Today was a totally food-orientated day (yeah... very different from our other days, we know). We woke up to snow pouring down from the sky outside (not in our hotel room, that would be too disturbing). Neither of us expected it this early in December & thus were unfortunately, not fully dressed appropriately for the situation... crap...

its snowingggg!! *insert funny dance*

Breakfast: At local Lawson's convenience store

Rah: Pork onigiri, that the lady nicely heated up for me in the microwave. Very yummy.
Dee: Chicken instant noodles. The egg starts off at this inch-wide 1cm high block of yellow, sitting on top of noodles. It suddenly reconstitutes to strings of egg. I don't know how the japanese do it, but this proves they are leaders in innovation.

Stop 1: Ishiya Chocolate Factory, aka Shiroi Koibito Factory.

Probably the producer of Hokkaido's most famous non-natural-growing export - the Shiroi Koibito chocolate biscuit. Shiroi Koibito, for those of you who don't speak japanese, translates to "White Lovers" & was apparently the term used by the creator of the factory to describe the snow (since Hokkaido is snow country after all).
They were, (sorry if you like them) sickeningly sweet (but then, i don't have much of a sweet tooth).

Luckily (& also randomly), this place also housed a gramophone & vintage toy museum.

Another attraction is the host of mini houses they had scattered around the park. Dee insisted on going into nearly all of them. Even tho they were made for children & the doors were half her size...

Lunch:



Location: Goodies from exploring a local supermarket.
Food:
1. Fried Chicken in yellow sauce
2. Fried Chicken cutlet in sweet brown sauce with ?potato salad on top

After 13 days in Japan, we still don't know what we are eating. I'm not even going to try.
Thankfully, dessert had a name. We've been meaning to try this one since when we first spotted it in on Day 1...

3. Haagen Das "Salty Butter Biscuit" flavour.
ie. Like those butter cookies you had in the blue round tin as a kid. YUM. The icecream itself is slightly salty vanilla goodness, as creamy as you would expect from this brand. In the centre, as you dig, there is biscuit!! miraculously, you can dig through the "biscuit" easily with the plastic spade and it seems one with the icecream. It tastes a little of undercooked dough, but the majority of the taste is "biscuity" not "doughy". There seemed to be multiple bits of biscuit <1cm.>
Stop 2: Sapporo Beer Museum


Sapporo is, interestingly, where Sapporo Beer is produced (well, duh). Sapporo beer is also the only beer that Clara had liked the taste of. We learned about how beer was produced & the history of beer in japan. Basically beer is made from hops and barley which is roasted into diff gradings giving us our different ales. Fermentation happens. It is pasturised. This is beer.
Then we got to taste 3 types of beer that they produce:


1. Black Label - Rah's Fav, very transparent looking and tasting. Not much of a foamy head.
2. Classic - Dee's Fav. It's been produced exclusively in Hokkaido since 1985, and is a favourite of the region. Its more bitter and astringent than the first.
3. Kaitakushi - It was ok. Don't remember it much... :)

Needless to say, we were both a bit giggly afterwards.
Highly recommended for both educational and historical value, and the fresh beer on tap to taste. I must commend the museum on the high quality of exhibition, loads of little models, along with English translations. Free entry to museum, beer tasting was reasonably priced. Top notch. They also sold "Beer Jelly" in the gift shop. Can't tell you what it tastes like- its not mine!

Dinner: Donburi

Location: Apia underground shopping centre
Food:
Dee: Gyudon (ie beef) + mini udon (Y430). I can't believe what value this is. Taste was passable, but it was what I paid for - a big bowl of hot rice with beef and vermicilli noodles on top. I thought the Gyudon was a little dry, I added chilli spice for extra taste. Udon was simple but good, even the stock was good. 7/10
Clara: Oyakodon + mini udon (Okayo = "mother & child" ie chicken + egg... name is possibly a bit disturbing). Very yummy, egg was still a bit runny (the best!) Udon was quite nice. 8/10

Day 10: Tokyo 2: Ghibli + Akihabara

Breakfast: Bagel & Bagel


Location: Lumine 2, Shinjuku Station
Clara remembered this shop's food fondly from her last Japanese visit. (& you must admit, the name is quite amusing.... at least we thought so)
Food:
1. Dee's mayo-prawn on plain bagel & teriyaki chicken on pepper bagel
2. Rah's mentaiko-egg on cheese bagel & cream cheese on chocolate bagel
Final score: 3.5. Clara found her mentai-egg (ie. spicy cod roe + egg) bagel a bit strange "I don't think it belongs on a bagel...". But the bagels themselves were fantastic, just not the filling. We'd recommend probably going for unfilled bagels (of which there are 10+ varieties including green tea...)

Ghibli Museum
Location: Mitaka
For our ignorant readers, Ghibli studios produced such childhood animated classics as My Neighbour Totoro, Laputa, Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away, amongst many others. The content of the museum as well as the building and surrounding garden is awe-inspiring. If you've watched these as a child, or have any artistic talent, interest in animation or cartoons, you must visit this when next in Tokyo. Its both our second times to the museum and it's as every bit as good as the first.


Lunch on the Go
Japanese people are awfully busy metropolitan people.

Since we spent so much time at the museum, we thought we'd catch up by eating lunch on the train. One thing I LOVE about Japan is it's abundance of specialty shops. There are often shops only specialising in selling ONE food item. The only equivalent in Sydney is probably in its dessert department (eg. cupcakes on Pitt), or juice bars. But I digress.
We were SO lucky to come across two such stores in Mitaka station. As in, they ONLY sell one type of rice-things (denise wrote sushi - but onigiri is not sushi, so we changed it)! You know the food must be top quality, otherwise they'd never sell their one product.

"ENMUSUBI"
Location: Inside gates, Mitaka JR Station
Specialty: Onigiri
Food:
1. Salmon Onigiri
(Their #1 best seller, and for good reason too)
2. Prawn Tempura Onigiri
(First time i've seen this in any onigiri shop, and its amazing)
Rate: 9/10


"MAMEDA"
www.mameda.co.jp
Location: Outside gates, Mitaka JR Station
Specialty: Inarizushi
Food:
1. Inarizushi Sampler
(4 of the 5 types of traditional inari's they sell, with different skins and fillings. I particularly liked wasabi filling and a deep chocolate coloured sweet soya sauce marinated tofu skin)
2. 2X Mini Tako-Inarizushi
(Half the size of normal. They are meant to be inari-zushi versions of takoyaki, and are even in specially small 1-inch tofu pockets that I've never seen before! Complete with octopus and a bit of ginger inside)
Rate: 9/10
Must try if you're a fan of Inarizushi. This is the first inarizushi specialty shop i've seen in my 9 days + previous travel in Japan.


Akihabara
= the electronic capital of Tokyo.
Akihabara is to Japan as Mong Kok is to Hong Kong (it's more like Ap Liu Gai in certain elements, but denise refused to type that). Sort of anyway.


As we exited the station, we saw more caucasians than usual and one guy holding an LCD monitor packaged only in bubble wrap. We knew we were in the right place.
We spent our time wandering the streets, amusing ourselves with the variety of wireless mice, iPhone covers, USB sticks (imitating the shape of sushi, guitars, humping dogs and cute monkeys which you behead to reveal the USB stick bit). Anyway...

We also visited Tokyo Anime Centre, which was a bit of a let down.
Like Den-Den town of Osaka, there are a few anime specialty shops scattered amongst the electronics. It seems they share the same audience of male shoppers, but these appear of a younger age - maybe it's the time of day? The 6-floored "Animate" seems to be a good one to visit if you're into Anime.

Shinjuku
Dinner was at an Izakaya.
Izakaya are drinking places that offer a variety of small dishes, such as robata (grilled food), salads and finger food. It is probably the most popular restaurant type among the Japanese people. Izakaya tend to be informal, and the people at one table usually share all dishes, rather than ordering and eating individually.
(http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2036.html)

We ordered:

1. Chicken skewer with mentai topping (spicy cod roe)
   
2. Chicken-skin skewer
3. Chicken-cartilage karaage
   
4. Hot chips on a hot plate of 3 sausages
5. Rice cake & Tofu in stone pot
6. Udon-carbonara

Rating:7.5/10
Quite an unexpectedly filling meal, and all the dishes were quite nice. the Udon carbonara was surprisingly good & of course, chicken skewers always does the trick. It also helped that some lady passed us a 500yen-off voucher as we walked in the building. It was just quite unfortunate that the entire place smelled of smoke, luckily the couple that sat next to us did not smoke (there anyway).

After Dinner Shopping:
After that satisfying meal, we were off to Muji. If you don't know what Muji is, then you have likely been living under the preverbial rock that is Australia & have never ventured into an asian country.
Muji is a shop that sells EVERYTHING. "Muji is distinguished by its design minimalism, emphasis on recycling, avoidance of waste in production and packaging, and no-logo or "no-brand" policy." Unfortunately for them, Muji has become a brand in its own right.
Clara especially loves their pens & storage things. After getting kicked (politely) out of the store (as we stayed till closing-time), we wandered back to our hotel to write to you lovely ppl.... if anyone is actually reading this thing.

Day 3: Universal Studios

Breakfast:

"We were too hungry to notice the name"
Type: Stand up Udon Bar
Location: Umeda station outside JR station entry
Food:
1. Set A: Kitsune Udon + Onigiri
Kitsune udon is always good. So it Onigiri (It was a "sandwich" variety where the topping was squashed between two layers of rice rather than buried in middle. Rice is less "packed" than that of family mart, more amount of filling)
2. Set B: Seaweed Udon + Ricebowl
Rice bowl was fantastic. This type of seaweed I have never tried before. It dejavu'ed in my mind as being partly like eating my own hair, partly like accidentally eating a fluffy dust ball.
Ambience: Local. Eating a bowl of noodles standing up is harder than one imagines.

After the heartening breakfast, we ventured to UNIVERSAL STUDIOS!!!! =)
this was lots of fun, and we kinda got very distracted by the merchandise... especially those incredibly cute cookie monsters....

Rides:
1. Hollywood Dream: 5+/5, esp after dark
2. Space Fantasy: 4/5, too much like space mountain but not as good, the fire creatures were cute tho!
3. Adventures of Spiderman: 4/5, special effects & 3D stuff was cool
4. Back to the Future: 3/5, similar ride to above, but just not as good
5. Snoopy Sound Adventures: 3/5, simple kid's rollercoaster
6. Peppermint Patty's Stunt Slide: 2/5, too short, we were inside a normal yellow water slide pipe-thing the whole time, got abnormally wet for the amount of water that was actually in the slide



Ones we did not go on as the risk-of-being-soaked factor was too high: Jaws & Jurassic Park. We watched the projectile of water as the boat landed = not worth the risk. Especially as we had already gotten wet during peppermint patty's.... and didn't find the heat radiator until 2 hours later, when we were already dry.

We also noticed that it seemed everyone came prepared with 1. plastic ponchos for the wet rides & 2. pretty plastic sheets to sit on during the parades (not disposable plastic bags, actual plastic mats with hello kitty etc on them designed, apparently, for such a purpose).


The 4D shows (shrek & sesame st) were cool, the latter being better, but that could be partly due to the fact that clara had seen the shrek one already @ movie world...

Lunch:

"SNOOPY'S BACKLOT CAFE"
Location: Universal Studios, Osaka
Type: Japanese Fastfood
Food:
1. Crab Creme Croquette Burger Meal
Where else can you get a running Snoopy stamped on the bun? That's what you pay for. Typical of japanese cusine, the bun is sweeter than even Aussie Macca's quaterpounder buns. The croquette is soft and has discernible particles of shredded crab stick. I don't think i've ever had cabbage in a burger, but thats what Japanese have with their fried foods (ie. katsu), so it goes well. Topped with a tangy ranch dressing. Not bad, if only it weren't the size of my palm.
Sides of 2 chicken nuggets looked sad, had more texture and taste than Aussie macca's. Funnily enough they were the SAME shape and size. There were about 8 chips? Scant.
My iced coffee was good.

Snack Time:

"SIDEWALK CARTS IN UNIVERSAL STUDIOS"
Food:
1. Snoopy Banana Cream & Sweet Bean Paste Bun
2. Hello Kitty Pork Bun with Cheese
3. Dear Daniel Pizza Bun
These three are "man" (pronounced "mun", as in "Pizza-mun") aka steam buns, like char-sui-bao. We tried them for the sake of research. And it was surprisingly lovely. Especially Snoopy's ears, which were black sesame bread!! The banana-cream was a bit weird though. It was strange but also somewhat therapeutic tearing their heads in half and eating them.

Dinner:

"OSAKA TAKOYAKI MUSEUM"
Its not really a food theme park. Or museum. There's nothing museum about it.
Type: Collection of 5 takoyaki stores + gift shop

Location: University Citywalk, outside universal studios.
Food: A Sampler of 3 types of takoyaki
1. Tako-yaki
2. Rice-cake & Cheese
3. Akashi-yaki
Takoyaki is the standard octopus ball. Yesterday's were nicer. Still my favourite of the three.
Rice-cake and Cheese: it muse be a current japanese food phase to add cheese to everything. Like the Hello-kitty pan. And 3 Cup Noodle flavours released this month for its anniversary "Cheese Gratin, Curry Cheese and a cheesy pizza flavour".
The Third and final: very eggy and had to be dipped into the light fish broth before eating. Mine fell apart. I never was a big fan of egg, I prefer them poached or a soft boiled perfection.

Dinner 2: Cup Noodles from yesterday

"MOMOFUKU ANDO NISSIN CUP NOODLES"
Location: Hotel room
Food: Cup Noodles from museum's vending machine.
1. Milk Seafood
"YUM"
2. Spicy Tomato
"Take a original flavour cup noodle, add in a packet of continental spicy tomato soup mix. Add water. This is what it tastes like. Unfortunately its an unharmonious marriage. 2/5"