We landed in Haneda and decided to explore some of the sections we hadn't been to before. I'm not sure how we never knew, but Haneda has multiple floors of food courts and novelty shops. They don't have many options as far as duty-free goes, but they do have a Hello Kitty store.
Have you seen a sadder sight in your life? Kimono clad Kitty-chan taunting my wife. How dare she. There were even billboards claiming the store is open 24 hours. It's criminal I tell you. Haneda also has this deck where you can watch planes take off.
Only in Japan will people want to sit around and watch planes. It looks nice and all, but Japanese people are complete suckers for stuff like this. Actually, they just like to look at things in general.
The food court looks like a movie set. Pretty novel and inviting. Haneda looks like a decent place to kill time if you're waiting for a plane. Maybe next time we fly out, we'll get to the airport earlier so we can give it a better look.
I've just been getting some work done since we got back, and things have been quiet overall. The last few days we tried some new places for dinner. ぶち旨屋 - Buchiumaya is an okonomiyaki place down one of the side-streets around us. I found it by basically google-mapping our neighborhood and picking the highest rated place.
Not really sure what the name means. I tried to translate it and it still doesn't make sense to me. Also, we didn't figure out until we got there that it's Hiroshima-syle okonomiyaki. I still don't know what the difference is. The place looked like the real deal though. A surly head chef, seating at the teppan, and waiting stools outside. The menu even had names of TV stations next to each dish for when it was on TV. We went with the second most popular dish: もちチーズ肉玉そば - mochi cheese nikutama soba. My friend Sarah first introduced me to the idea of mochi and cheese in Osaka, and this preparation definitely didn't disappoint.
We'll be back for sure. We ordered two okonomiyaki (one with cheese, one without - cheese is better), and it was wayyy too much food. We still have leftovers in the fridge... By the way, taking home leftovers in Japan is not a very propagated activity. The fact that we can do it at Buchiumaya is a big deal. Big.
That same day, we went to 7-11 to pay our bills. I'm not sure if I've explained the whole paying bills at the convenience store thing, but while we were there we saw a Fuku Bukuro. Fuku Bukuro is a tradition in Japan where they stuff these mystery bags with random items and sell them at a fixed price. The draw is that whatever you get will definitely be worth more than what you pay. Usually, it happens at department stores on January 1st, but that didn't stop 7-11 from cashing in on the trend as well.
That 1000 Yen bag was full of approximately 1700 Yen worth of snacks. Completely terrible for you crap that I ate within two days. Yeah the bag was definitely worth what we paid, but there's no way I would have eaten that much junk food if I hadn't gotten caught up in the hype. Still worth it, I think. I got a sweet bag that says Fuku Bukuro - Good Luck Bag on it. See that blue five pack of gum? Each of those cost 99 Yen, and we valued the pack at 400 Yen in our estimate. Unfortunately, that makes up a big chunk of the 1700 and I may never chew all that gum. Anyone want some?
The next day, we checked out this new joint that opened up around us called Cafe ガスト. I think "gasuto" is supposed to be "gusto," but I'm not really sure. We walked in and figured out pretty quickly that the place was more of a family restaurant than a cafe. V ordered a hamburger plate and I got myself a mushroom bacon pasta.
Nothing wrong with a meat patty covered with gravy. Plus it was really cheap. My pasta was also less than 500 Yen.
Nothing to write home about...like I'm doing right now. Still, dinner cost us less than 1000 Yen together and wasn't bad at all. That's difficult to accomplish in Tokyo, so no doubt we'll be back to take advantage of Cafe Gasuto again sometime.
Well, dinner was cheap until we added dessert. Not less than 500 Yen was the chiffon cake.
V had a good time if you couldn't tell. It might have been the most expensive part of our meal, but it was also the biggest in terms of volume. That damn chiffon cake was huge. We were trying to figure out how big 12 cm during our meal. We clearly underestimated either 12 cm or the chiffon cake lied.
Yep, this is becoming a food blog...
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