Week 13 part 5 - birthday in Tokyo

Our Tokyo stay started off with a great lunch recommended by our good friend K. As soon as we checked in and connected to Wifi I found a message on my phone from K. After I told her the location of our hotel she said there's a fish restaurant nearby that she frequents with great lunch menus. I entered the address in Google map and lo! It's all of 300m away! There was no question that we were going there, pronto!

The restaurant Ginbei was tucked away on a back street of Ginza, on the 5F of a non-descript building, with not much of a sign. There was no way we would've found the place if K hadn't told us. 

J again goes for the biggest set there is, and I chose a seafood sashimi donburi (kaisen-don) set.

A big vat of silky tofu steeped in soy milk came out first for us to share. You could eat it as it is, or pour some light soy sauce over it. It was creamy and full of soya flavors. The sashimi in my donburi was super fresh with a lot of silver fish in it. The tempura was also lovely, with a nice crunchy coat. Soba was delicious, although not as good as the one we had in Kurokawa.

J's sashimi platter deserves it's own photo. Not sure if this is exactly appetizing if you're not used to looking at a whole fish, but it sure is fresh!

The rest of his lunch set was equally impressive. He had a choice between grilled and braised fish and he chose braised. It was half of a very large fish head. Again, I think you need to be used to eating every part of a fish to enjoy this meal ;oP

After lunch we went to meet our friends T & A for tea. I chose a place called Glaciel that specializes in gelato desserts in Omotesando when I saw their sakura season specialty.  The menu is extensive and there's a daily rotation of ice-cream cakes that you can sample. A ordered two scoops of gelato: passionfruit and coffee cinnamon. T opted for the dessert platter, which consists of your choice of either two or three ice cream cake/dessert from the daily roster. The friendly staff also brought out a platter of mini palmier for us to sample.

Of course I had to order the seasonal special cake called Sakura. It took 15 minutes to prepare but when it was brought out we couldn't stop woo-ing and ah-ing. Would you look at this?

Each of the perfectly shaped cube is a little bite of sakura flavored peach sorbet, piled on top of a ball of mascarpone sorbet and sakura ice cream in a meringue bowl. The whole thing is then doused in two kinds of sakura syrup. 

On the way out we checked out all their ice cream cakes available for ordering. If you order online there were only a limited choices (which is already a lot if you ask me), but if you make your way to their Omotesando shop you have the whole range to choose from. They deliver to all parts of Japan, for FREE, but not internationally =o(

I'm a creature of habit and always climb to the top of the La Foret building and take in the view when I'm on Omotesando, and today we caught a beautiful sunset!

Since we've been doing so much eating and not a lot of exercising, we decided to walk to Shibuya. We thought about skipping dinner because we were still so full from the late lunch and even later tea, but once in Shibuya nostalgia hit J. He started looking for the tiny yakitori place we used to go once in a while under the train tracks. So this ended up being my birthday dinner.

Department store basements (depa-chika) is a unique experience not to be missed when visiting Japan. You are surrounded by all kinds of beautiful, mouthwatering food, and if you're lucky, some counters will be handing out samples. We went to Toyoko depa-chika after dinner and I picked up a chestnut pie from Henri Charpentier, and two mochi from a Japanese store: sakura and kusa mochi.

This is to be breakfast tomorrow =o)

Week 13, part 3 - Kurokawa Onsen Day 2

The next morning we had a very typical ryokan styled breakfast spread before heading out.

We had udon from the lovely restaurant Soutaroan again, and a hot pot of freshly picked bamboo shoot, which was so fragrant. I've always loved wrapping my own rice in crispy nori sheets and even J couldn't resist and had one.

After a short visit to Nabegataki in the nearby Ogunimachi we drove to El Patio Ranch so I could do some riding.

The horse I rode was a 12 year old American quarter horse from Texas named Ang. She looks like the horse I jump back home =o)

After riding I was completely frozen because of the cold wind over the plains, so we decided to eat at the restaurant on the ranch. To be honest we were not expecting much because the place was completely deserted and the decor didn't exactly scream gourmet. To our great surprise, however, the Aka-ushi beef was excellent. In fact the best on the entire trip.

J's filet was so tender with just the right amount of fat without being too rich. It was also grilled perfectly to medium rare. Kudos to the chef!

My burger made with 100% Aka-ushi was equally impressive, once you get past the presentation. I read later that Aka-ushi makes up only 0.36% of the wagyu consumed in Japan, making it extremely rare. The cows who are raised to give birth live entirely on the Aso grassland during the month of April through November, eating the highly nutritious grass that's commercially farmed as hay. To qualify as Aka-ushi the cattle has to be born and raised entirely in Aso area and be fed only fresh grass or hay harvested in Aso area.

After lunch we drove to Kurokawa onsen town. The temperature had dropped ten degrees overnight so I never really thawed out after riding. The best way to warm up is actually to take a dip in a hot spring, but the process of getting in one is too cold so I opted to eat something to generate body heat, and that's when we stumbled onto this little bakery

Everything looked good but what caught my eye was their choux pastry baked with shio-koji. The skin looks crinkly and crunchy and the custard cream is made with Oguni Jersey cow milk and free range eggs. To maintain the crispiness of the skin the choux is filled only after a customer places an order.

Look at all this yumminess!!

Shortly after the choux we had another tea break. This time at a traditional Japanese sweets shop. I had rice balls in black sugar bean powder and J had amazake. My rice balls were chewy and smooth and the bean powder had oomph. J's amazake was sweet and delicious as well.

We walked a little bit more after this but decided to escape back to the warmth of our ryokan.

Alas! More food awaits us back at Yamashinobu.

And before long it was dinner again!! Tonight we started with an amuse bouche of crab, scallops and mountain okra. The appetizer platter consisted of: Ayu fish boiled in mirin, Japanese duck marinated in miso, air dried daikon, shibani prawn, sake kasu manju, squid with sesame dressing. The soup had grilled sea bream, shiitake and yuzu inside. Sashimi platter was different parts of sea bream. The lidded dish was a giant fish and shiitake meatball which was very nice. We also had grilled yellowtail and pork.

For the main we had a local specialty of steamed Aka-ushi beef and Aso free range chicken. With the excellent grilled filet still on our mind we greedily ordered an extra dish of grilled beef, which turned out to be not as nice as the beef at lunch.

I was glad to see noodles from the Soutaroan again, and this time it was charcoal udon. Dessert was a tiramisu and fresh fruits.

Next morning after another elaborate breakfast spread we drove back to Fukuoka city.

Japanese highway stops are not to be missed, and we have definitely stopped at one of the better ones.

The bakery had some really mouthwatering selections that I couldn't resist.

And I found my favorite drink!