Day 15: Last day of eating

Today is a special day.
It was only 15 days ago we were on a flight to come to Japan to eat.
One day ago, we got sick of ramen.
Today is the first morning I have awoken and not craved a ball of rice wrapped in seaweed.

Is it really the end??

Breakfast @ Nijo Fish Market

3 streets worth of "fish market". i.e, showing off the world's hugest crabs. And roe.
There was a recurring theme with ppl talking to us at this place:
1. Are you from Hong Kong? (do we really look that honky? Or do a lot of honkies just come here)
2. Oh, Australia.... Summer? (our sushi chef followed this up by: "Santa claus... t-shirt?" "No, he wears the full suit." "Ah, very hot!")
3. Try? Try?

We had brunch at the stand-up sushi bar in the middle of the fish markets. It was a tiny place, but served super super fresh sushi.

We both had the kakashi set, which included (left top, clockwise to left bottom):
usame (ie fish called halibut), toro (ie fatty tuna), scallops, sweet prawn, surf clam, egg, crab, salmon roe, sea urchin (uni), salmon

The toro was a bit lacking, but the rest was super yummy.
Came with seafood miso soup (with 2 prawn heads each!) Gave the miso soup that extra sweetness.

Score: 9/10
(minus 1 for the sadly disappointing toro, which i left til 2nd last to eat! The toro I had in sydney was 5X better...)

ROYCE Shop + Cafe
If you don't know about Royce, it's one of the most famous chocolate brands from Japan.
They have a cafe in Sapporo near Odori Park, so we went in to excape from the snow storm that had just started. Their Chocolat Chaud (pictured below) was super creamy & super chocolate-y - definately recommended for anyone making a stop at Sapporo. It came with a little chocolate piece by the name of "frommage"... but it didn't taste anything like cheese.... just white chocolate....


More shopping + Daimaru Depachika
A bit of shopping afterwards at the conveniently placed underground shopping centres (did i mention that like 1/3 of the city is underground - you can kinda understand it if you spend a day in winter here...) & a much-anticipated visit to the Depa-chika (ie B1 floor ie food floor) of Daimaru. Filled, as expected, with lots of things to taste & yummy food to look at. One of the food-tasting-servers (whatever they're actually called) was over-enthusiastic with practicing his English (which, interestingly, also consisted of "Ah, Australia, Summer? Very Hot!".... hm... recurring theme anyone? or is that all they were taught?). Luckily for us, due to this, he gave us a bit to try of everything there.... as opposed to the lady in front of us who only got 1 dish.

And then an early return to our hotel room to try to convince our luggage to fit everything we've acquired on this wonderful trip. The suitacases seem to have an appetite as great as our stomachs.

Dinner @ Apia

Location: Apia
Type: Udon joint



Clara craved udon, and Dee needed somewhere cheap to eat (we're seriously running out of cash...) so we picked this Udon joint.
Food:
1. Cold udon set + tempura fish sticks (+hot rice + pickles)
2. Hot special udon

The cold udon set was topped with shreds of nori, bonito flakes, grated daikon on a shiso leaf (perilla), and 2 huge sticks of tempura'ed fish stick (the type which is a cylinder, but halved lengthwise). All i can say is YUM. Along with a sauce to add of course. And chopped green spring onion + ginger to add to taste. YUM. The only problem is that its cold, and snowing outside, but I've acclimatised in the last 3 days walking through snow, so it doesn't bother me.

Clara's hot special udon was a mix of 5 udons - topped with kitsune, tempura, soft poached egg, hairy seaweed and wakame seaweed. It was yum apparently. "Yum" says she.

Overall rating: 8.5/10
The udon wasn't handmade, but for a decent price everything else tasted tops.

Kinokuniya
Then we bummed in big book shop. Clara buy books. Denise go to children book section and read picture book in english and be amused.



The last note
This ends the official part of our blog journey. Thank you all for reading and exploring Japan with us and our stomachs. :) Its definitely given me plenty of new ideas to try my hands at back home in the kitchen, so we hope its been inspiring for you too!

If you'd like to try to replicate any of these foods, however crazy it may be, let me (Dee) know and I'd love to cook with you.

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"