Curry, Horumon, More Food, More Food...

So there's this curry place by us that's been hyped by various people. The problem is I don't know if you can say something's hyped if it's actually really good. Coco Ichi is one of those places. It's a curry chain and there really isn't much to tell you about it other than what I told V after the first bite, "This is damn delicious."

I would've posted a picture before it was eaten, but it didn't last. Sorry. That picture doesn't even make it look that great, but I tell you there is something very special in that broth. It also comes with something fried like a katsu on top of the rice. When we get a large, there's enough curry and rice to last two meals!

We've gotten to eat a lot of random things. In fact we see what they call "Horumon" all the time. Horumon is written ホルモン and katakana is usually reserved for foreign words, so we naturally thought it referred to "hormones." I'm pretty sure a lot of people make this mistake since Miwa is Japanese and didn't know any better either. I've probably told this story before, but I'll tell it again.

When we had Horumon last with yakiniku, we had to explain to Miwa that "hormones" were things like Testosterone and Estrogen. To which she naively asked if we were eating Estrogen. Miwa~ かわいい. Well turns out we were really wrong anyway.

The term horumon comes from 放る物 pronounced the same way. It's a Kansai dialect term literally meaning "discarded goods." Wiki tells me that horumon is equivalent to offal, so it's basically all the parts of pigs and cows we don't usually eat. This includes tripe, stomach, brain, etc. Good to know I think.

We grocery shop nearly every day, and the other day we finally caved into our ice cream cravings and bought some Haagen Dazs. There are a whole bunch of flavors, but we decided to go for Milk Classic and Cookies and Green Tea for now.

Milk Classic really tasted like milk; pretty good. Cookies and Green Tea sounded like a potential disaster, but I loved it. I mean you have to like green tea ice cream, but the cookies make a solid addition.

One thing that hasn't changed since coming to Japan is that we never know what to eat. We literally spend an hour thinking of things we might want to eat, getting hungrier and hungrier, then either not eating at all or pigging out on whatever we decide. Last night we did manage to decide on Freshness Burger.

Along with Mos Burger, it's the Japanese burger chain we've seen most often. We went with a mushroom vegetarian burger (I love mushrooms), a fish burger, and fried potatoes.

The burgers are pretty tasty and really light. In fact I would call them more light than fresh, but it's kinda nice how they don't weight you down. Then again, we didn't completely feel fulfilled either and proceeded to eat snacks and crap before passing out. Regardless, we both enjoyed Freshness Burger. Except the fried potatoes; didn't like those that much. It's nice that we've found both Coco Ichi and Freshness Burger as good takeout options. Not all places let you take things to go and you don't always feel like sitting down to eat.

I followed it up with this beer that I got suckered into buying via TV commercials:

OMG. So gross. Pretty much the same thing as really low quality beer in the US. Except Keystone and Milwaukee's Best don't go around pretending that they're really any good. I guess Miller High Life kinda does, which is why I hate High Life the most!

I anticipate the bulk of my posts are going to be about food or shopping. People have been telling us, "Oh, this place is good" or "Oh, this place is famous." Especially Izumi today; to her every place is famous.

I don't think it's worth talking about everything, but we basically went on an Azabu-Juban / Ginza field trip today and bought a lot of random crap to eat:

From left to right, there's famous taiyaki, famous Baumkuchen, famous karinto, and famous waffles and creme. All delicious of course. The taiyaki is from a place called 浪花屋総本店 - Naniwaya Sohonten. I read somewhere that they were the first to invent taiyaki in 1909, but to be frank I'm not sure. I would like to think it's true though. The place only has taiyaki and the taiyaki is very good. A lot of taiyaki is cakey, but this one had very little batter and was baked fairly crisp in a charcoal oven.

The end result is crispy, a little chewy, and filled to the brim with anko, red bean paste. I felt like the anko was not too sweet although V disagreed. Whatever, right? I really really liked these taiyaki. I had read previously that you should order ahead because the wait for them can be two hours long. We did order ahead, but after I ate two of the three we ordered, I managed to get three more after only a five minute wait. Yay.

Here's a gratuitous picture of Nenrinya Baumkuchen. A bit expensive but more than a bit delicious. Right after this picture, a lady came up and told me, "no pictures," but little did she know, it was too late! The chocolate one looks pretty good...hmmm.

Dinner was in Ginza and we wandered around looking at some interesting buildings, bought random food, and met up with Miwa. We went looking for the hole in the wall Thai restaurant that looked promising because of the long line:

Let's face it, you can never go wrong with a hole in the wall place with a long line. 30 mins later we treated ourselves to some delicious Thai food. The place had won an award called a Kitanachelin. The Kitanachelin is given out by this Kitana guy who has a TV show where he basically goes to eat at backwater restaurants and then gives out awards. I'm pretty sure if you make it onto the show, they're not cruel enough to not give you the award. It's still kinda fun and cool to show off the Kitanachelin.

Another night in Tokyo surrounded by good food and beautiful women.

Just kidding. I already have ma wife. Sorry girls.