Making the List - Part II: 花見 - Hanami & Kawaii Paradise

Hanami

The usual season for Hanami is early April when most of the sakuras blossom.  Fortunately, there exists a species known as kanzakura which bloom in late February.  V and I had been planning on going to Shinjuku Gyoen where we've heard that these kanzakura can be found and hadn't quite gotten around to it yet.  It's been quite warm lately and the weather appeared to be favoring us, but on Friday night there was this crazy crazy windstorm and we suddenly got quite afraid that there wouldn't be any flowers left on the trees.

This is exactly what we feared and we only hoped that the sakura had survived the wind's onslaught.  Shinjuku-gyoen is a beautiful and well-kept garden that is full of families, children, and no alcohol.  This didn't bode well for the beer I brought with me.  It's also a paid entry park and the quality of landscaping shows.

We walked around for a bit looking at the empty trees that would surely be full of flowers come april.  And then out of the corner of my eye, we spotted a glimmer of pink...

We did it!  We found the sakura.  Looks like everyone else found it as well, but there they were in all their unfettered glory.  We stuck around this area, joining in with all the old people and their gigantic cameras.  Cameras are enormously popular in Japan.  I always wondered how there could be so many camera stores, but Japanese people clearly buy way more cameras than the rest of the world.  This group of trees were pretty but amazingly the best was yet to come.  We ventured out into a bit of a remote path so that I could illegally hanami by myself.  And by hanami I mean drink...

Not suspicious at all.  I took my time making sure I wasn't seen by anyone other than photographic evidence, and we continued on once I was done.

Mission success.  We walked around aimlessly and I'm not sure how we did it, but we found it, the best tree of them all.  This sight alone made me super glad that we decided to visit the park.

Yay.

After the beautiful sakura, I suppose we owed it to Shinjuku Gyoen to check out what else it had to offer, and you know what, there was actually a lot of stuff to look at.

A pair of bridges connected us to a zen island in the middle of a pond.

I evilly shook my empty bag off the side of the bridge, and all these stupid fish came to eat nothing.

Hahahaha.  Ha.  The park was closing and everyone headed towards the exits.  It's still too bad that we won't have the chance to witness all the normal sakuras in April, but at least we were able to witness the kanzakura.  Before we made our way out, the park had one last crazy thing to show us.

I think those wooden stub looking things are actually the roots coming out from under the ground.  Make sure you click on the picture and zoom in.

Kawaii Paradise

This is not part of Kawaii Paradise.  This is just a pillar of the Rinkai-sen Tokyo Teleport Station that I was particularly attracted to.

This is Kawaii Paradise.  Bigger than a Sanrio store but smaller than the theme park, Kawaii Paradise is made up of four main sections: a store, a pancake shop, an arcade, and a show. The last show was already over by the time we showed up, and Kitty-chan was on her way out.  V wasn't ready to take a picture with her, but we didn't know that she was leaving and by the time we went looking for a picture, she was already gone.  Bitch.  Alas...

The store is not especially big, but does seem to carry some specialty items.  I've become fairly well versed with the current season's stock of Sanrio items, and there were a bunch of things I've never seen before.

Amazingly, we didn't buy anything there.  V collects these keychain pens that they make for various Japanese locales, and we were surprised to find that the Kawaii Paradise store didn't have any.  We found some later in a Kiddy Land chain though.

I made the decision that if we were going to do Kawaii Paradise right, we needed to have a Pancake Party.

Ain't no party like a pancake party.  Kitty-chan makes some pretty decent pancakes.  Another one of those foods that tastes exactly how it looks.

We even spent some time in the arcade, throwing money away at one of those grabbing machines.

Neither of us were very good at it and in the end, V was left with nothing to show for our efforts.  Next time I'm just using that money to buy the damn thing.

So we didn't buy anything in Kawaii Paradise, but there was a Kiddy Land nearby and we picked up a couple thing there.  There was also an electronics store close by with Akihabara themed Kitty-chan charms.  We picked up this one as a souvenir for our friend Kevin.

Megane maid cafe kitty-chan.  Sorry kevin, the comedy value was just too high.  Doesn't she look a little tsun tsun too?

Kawaii Paradise is actually part of a mall called VenusFort.  We didn't know anything about this, but there were a whole lot of people (tourists) there to take advantage of the outlet mall and the duty-free stores.  Even Tokyoites who've never been should definitely go check it out.  VenusFort's interior design reminded me of the Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace.

We went in and out of several stores including the Franc Franc outlet where V bought an apron.  I stopped by Onitsuka Tiger

but didn't buy anything.  We also checked out Burberry Blue Label for the first time.  In Japan, the blue label is a Japan-only store, and normal Burberry is called Burberry Black.  I had always been afraid to go in because I was worried I might find something I like at an outlandish price.  The bad news is that I did find something I like.  The good news is it wasn't as expensive as I thought it would be.  Don't get me wrong; Burberry Blue is not exactly cheap, but in the range where I can buy something from time to time.  Like when I have a little excess cash before leaving Japan...  Or when your wife buys it for you.  =) <3

We continued to venture the halls of VenusFort as various parts of it lit up.  It's a really nice place to just walk around in, which is what we did while we killed time for dinner.  Our original plan was to check out Tsukishima again for some Monja and Okonomiyaki, but we came across the Osaka Okonomiyaki chain Botejyu in the food court.  Lazy and tired, we settled for the closer option and split a mochi cheese okonomiyaki.

Botejyu is tasty and satisfied our craving but was only the third or fourth best okonomiyaki we've had.  It's a national chain and a safe bet, but just not as good as the handful of alley stores we've been to.  


I have to say this checking the list thing has been going surprisingly well.  More to come.

送別会 - Soubetsukai - Farewall Party

Yeah, it's sad.  Eleven of our friends got together with us for a final farewell that Diana organized.  Seems like Diana organizes a lot of these things.

I have to say that I have never made so many friends in such a short time before in my life.  And they're people I really like.  That came out wrong.  I guess what I mean to say is that I hope everyone stays in touch.

I still need to preface this event with our activities leading up to it.  The day of the party was the same day I stayed up until god-awful writing those papers.  As a result, we woke up late and didn't end up doing much that day.  What we did do is head into Shinjuku-san-chome to hang out for a bit for a couple hours before dinner .

Why that meant going to Barney's I dunno.  I could argue that we wanted a taste of home, but we're going home!  The case for Barney's is that it actually is a little different in Tokyo.  Although, we never go to Barney's in Chicago...  Still it was one of those places that we've been afraid to enter.  Amazingly, we discovered that it wasn't actually super-expensive.  A lot of the designers were American sure, but there were plenty of Japanese labels I've never seen before.  Maybe even our clothes tastes have started to get a little Japanized, but I could see myself frequenting that place if we ever came back and lived here.

We effed around until dinner at 8 PM by roaming the streets and checking out random stores.  And then it was time for the saddest party ever.

Look at how grim everyone looks.  Dinner was at this place called Yama-chan and involved about six or seven courses and a nomihodai.  Yama-chan is apparently known for those chicken wings that you can see in the foreground.  Yes, they were delicious.  Miwa and Fuyuko can attest to that.

Especially Miwa.  Just kidding, I probably ate the most wings I think, but everything there from the salad to the chicken karaage was delicious.  I dunno what Diana thinks is so funny though.  Our original reservation was for fourteen and we ended up with thirteen people, so I think what happened was that the other side of the table ate for six instead of five.

I was actually floating between the tables and eating off of both.  I ate a lot.  We had some fun with the nomihodai ordering anything and everything off the drink menu.  Once Diana got a cassis beer, everyone else decided they needed to try it.  The side of the table above was drinking cassis-orange cocktails all night.  It tasted like juice.  I think it was juice because none of them even got drunk.  The identity of a cassis was a mystery to everyone, but I just looked it up and it turns out that its the French name for a blackcurrant. Just need to figure out what a blackcurrant is.

Somehow, no one actually got that drunk, nomihodai ended, and it was time for cake!

I think we should have gotten a cake that said, "Everyone, we will miss you."  Instead we brought an apple-kuchen straight from Aomori.

It certainly was a bit of a sad occasion, but hopefully we'll be back in town to see everyone again soon.

I shan't forget about the unexpected presents!  We got a lot of really thoughtful and amazing things from grow your own edamame to Japan-themed napkins to bath products and even eye-pillows.

The party dispersed soon after and most everyone went their separate ways.  A few of us stopped by Mister Donut for a super quick fix; then the cool kids headed to the after-party.

The 30 minute after party over a bottle of champagne.  Good times.  Well, I won't get too sappy yet.  We still have a couple days left in Tokyo after all!

Making the List - Part I

...and checking it.  Just once.

That last Aomori post was a little rushed since I'm running totally behind.  I've been pretty busy with this class that started the day after we got back from Aomori and ended a few days ago.  Actually, the class ended on Thursday and then I predictably ended up slacking off most of Friday.  Friday night, I planned to write the papers for my two intensive classes and instead went to work out at around midnight.  2 AM rolled around, and I looked up my assignments and it turned out that one of the papers was due in ten hours...

Problem was, I had already started the other paper and had it forming in my head, so even though it wasn't due, I did that one first and then pumped out the first one by 7 AM.  Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I'm running way behind on blog posts so I'm going to make this easy on myself.

We've made ourselves a list of things we want to eat and do before we leave Tokyo.  So here they are in a list and with little wit:

Fuku

V had still not been to Fuku, and of course time was running out.  We were finally able to make a reservation and went for gourmet yakitori with Diana and Gordon.  The funny thing about Fuku is that Khai introduced it to us, and then it's spread like wildfire amongst our friends.

The same day we were there, we saw Minako there with her boyfriend and a couple of others. 

That's plenty of evidence as to just how epic Fuku is.  My favorite thing there is probably the grilled oysters, but really, there was too many things on that I wanted to try on the menu for my stomach to handle. 

Soup Stock Tokyo

I love soup.  Like my affinity for soup is way higher than the normal person's.  If Soup Stock Tokyo was any closer to us, it wouldn't have taken me so long to try it, and I'm guessing I would have had it pretty often.

V and I tried a bowl of the Ebi Tofu Flurry Soup.  It was damn good.  I'm a huge fan of egg-drop type seafood soups.  Soup Stock Tokyo is pricey, but I'm a total sucker and if we had more time I would have enjoyed it a couple more times.  Luckily, we bought a couple of frozen soup packs to go as well.

万世麺店 - Mansei

We have walked by Mansei countless times in Shinjuku Station and been repeatedly intrigued by the concept of katsu on top of ramen.  This wasn't super high on our list, but since we were in the area, we decided to check it out.

The katsu is salty and the soupbase is mild and the combination turns out balanced.  Overall, it's not a bad bowl of ramen and a decent concept, but not exactly mindblowing.  I'm guessing that you might be able to find a better execution of this somewhere else in Tokyo.

Takano

So we've been eying this upscale dessert joint for a while now.  Recently, V's desire to go has increased dramatically due to her newfound craving for parfaits.  Did you know that in the past week she has twice made a hamburger patty topped by a fried egg and then smothered in ketchup for lunch?  For the past few months she's been drinking green tea with little snacks and even invested in a couple tins of matcha straight from Kyoto.

I digress. 

We ordered a very stereotypical strawberry parfait

and a strawberry dessert plate.  Everything was delicious.  Takano doesn't have the most delicate desserts, but you know what you're getting yourself into anyway.  My dessert plate was not actually as large as it looks.  Everything was pretty nice, but there was no single item that was truly amazing.  The jelly shot may actually have been my favorite.

V's parfait was probably better overall and larger in volume as well.  Yeah, that sucker was a beast. A yummy beast.

V was satisfied.  Have I mentioned that Takano's a great place to take a date?


In other news, this blog and V's new camera have exceeded my Google upload quota so I bought more webspace...

Leaving Tokyo - Aomori

Aomori had a lot of snow.  Way more than Hokkaido.  We also had no idea what there was to do in Aomori, and as soon as we rolled into the station, we went straight to the tourist center and just pulled as many guides and maps as we could.  We had had a pretty exhausting trip so far and so we the tentative plan was to head to our hotel which was located over half an hour outside of Aomori in Hirosaki and spend most of the day chilling out.

Still, we had time to fit in one place and chose to go check out the free entry 三内丸山遺跡, Sannai Maruyama Iseki.  Sannai Maruyama is actually an archaeological treasure and home to the dig-site of a village from the Jomon Period (13000 - 300 BC).  We didn't get a chance to check it all out, but we did want to go see the famous ancient structures that were uncovered.

Not those.  Those were just random snow huts they built out in front of the museum.  The signs that read "yusa," "dosa," and "na" did not make any sense to me either. 

I forget what that's supposed to be (maybe a house), but it's pretty big.  I was impressed. The outdoor museum continued on like this, but we decided to head back in since even just walking around with all that snow on the ground was difficult.  Sannai Maruyama Iseki was actually interesting and of course the price can't be beat.

We headed back to the station and took the surprisingly long train to Hirosaki, around where our hotel was located.  During the train ride, I had this bright idea to go check out the night views of Hirosaki Castle before we decided to check-in.  So, with all of our luggage in hand, we looked around for a bus that would take us to Hirosaki Park and hopped onto one the bus driver told us would get there.  A 45 minute tour of Hirosaki later, we were dropped off at the Southern entrance to the park.

At this point, we entered this foreboding gate and went through the creepiest adventure of our trip.

That park was super big and super freaky.  I thought there might be some people in there, because we saw a group of about six people leaving as we went in.  Turns out those were the only six people in the entire park.  We walked towards the middle of the park where the castle was supposed to be, stopping periodically to check maps.  We were looking at one in the dark when an enormous amount of snow fell off a tree and landed right next to us scaring the living crap out of us.  V started begging me to leave, but I was convinced we were close to seeing the castle and forced her on.

So that's the castle.  It had a different name on the map.  I was looking for 弘前城 and instead saw 本丸、二の丸、and 天-something.  I totally thought the castle was honmaru and that the one above was ninomaru.  So even though we had spent 15 minutes trudging through the haunted park, I felt like we needed to go and find honmaru.  We didn't go any further though, and it turns out that the castle above is actually the main castle.  It's a lot smaller than I thought it would be.

We continued out to the Eastern exit, which turned out to be the creepiest place of all.

Doesn't that look like a scene out of a horror movie?  Around this time is when we starting sprinting for the exit.  Safe and sound, we grabbed a taxi and made our way to our last onsen hotel, Minamida Appleland. 

Appleland is actually located a half an hour train ride outside of Hirosaki in Hiraka.  It really is out in the middle of nowhere, and the only view we saw on the way there was endless blackness blanketed in snow.  The train at 8PM was only filled with cram-school students.  We eventually got there, got checked in and then headed to our apple-themed dinner.  There were a couple of courses and then a buffet table of delicious appley delights.  Even our hotel room came with a couple of apples.

Notice a theme yet?  The biggest draw of Appleland are the apple onsens.  Yep, that's right.  Outdoor hot springs with apples floating in them.  I'm not sure what it does for your skin, but it sure does smell nice.  It's kind of hard to navigate an onsen full of apples since the apples tend to float away from where you enter the bath, but if you can get the apples to distribute evenly, it's pretty cool to be dipping with some apples bobbing around you.  If you can't distribute them evenly, they'll just float by themselves in the corner.  I love rotenburos by the way, especially in the winter.  I feel like you can just last longer and prevent overheating when your head is out in the cold.  It's great.

The back garden of Appleland is populated by what look to be apple trees.  Seems like it would be pretty nice to come and visit in the fall.  Appleland is in stark contrast with Nagisatei, and the hotel tries really hard to make sure you really enjoy your stay.  It may be a little out of your way, but they really make you feel welcome.  Highly recommended.

The last day of our journey rolled around, and we first went back to Hirosaki Castle to check it out during the day.

A winter wonderland scene.

But still a little creepy.  The day started out with a bit of rain, so we decided to buy an umbrella to get us through the day.  The rain cleared up by the time we made it back to Aomori, and we stashed the umbrella and our bags into a coin locker.  Unfortunately, the weather went totally ADD for the rest of the day with a lot of sun, a little bit of rain, a touch of a blizzard, and them some hail.

First up was the Aomori Museum of Art, the whitest museum in the world.  It didn't help that there was snow everywhere, but there was literally no color in that museum at all.  The bathrooms were also completely white including the toilet handle and the faucet.  It was kinda eerie.

The Aomori Museum of Art is filled with mostly contemporary works from mostly Aomori artists.  And let me tell you, Aomori artists are craaazyy.  Not sure what else to say about it but I think anyone who stops through Aomori should go check it out.  If you go when it's warm, you can actually go outside and stand under the dog.

In the winter, you are restricted to view it from indoors.  In case, you can't get the scale of that dog, we were looking at it from the second basement.  Because of the snow, it kinda looks like the dog is a chef!  A sleepy chef.

Surprisingly, one of the best parts of the museum was the Four Cats Cafe.  There was nobody there when we sat down to grab a bite, but we peacefully stared out the window

and chowed down on some amazing BLT Chicken Bagel.

That Aomori chicken was delicious.  I recently had a conversation about breeding some Kobe chicken (super fatty poultry), but it may already exist in Aomori.  And it tastes awesome.

Next up, we headed to Niconico Dori in downtown Aomori to get to the fish market before they closed.

The Aomori fish market is most famous for one dish: the nokke-don.  The nokke-don is basically a very typical donburi that begins with a bowl of rice.

and then you go from stall to stall and nokke (I don't actually know what that means) anything you want onto the rice.

We didn't go too crazy with ours, but you see we got some seafood and meat in there.  All the veggie places were closed already, and I didn't feel like venturing into the pickles.  The nokke-don really adds up since you pay 50-300 Yen every time you add something on.  It's pretty good but more gimmicky than anything and definitely for tourists.

Our final stop of the day was the Asupamu building and the Aoi Umi Park.  We made our way down Amenity Street and got to the crazy triangle Asupamu building.  I have no idea what Asupamu means.  There seem to be a lot of Aomori words I'm just not familiar with...

We passed up the building for now and went behind it where the park sat buried in snow. 

The snow was really too deep to navigate easily, and we only ended up wandering it for a bit.  I'm only able to stand in the picture above since some people before us packed the snow down in certain areas.  V actually fell through the top layer of snow and ended thigh deep in it.  There was this cool looking glass pyramid that I wanted to check out though...

and was denied entry. 

The rest of our time, we decided to simply waste away in the gift stores that make up the lobby of the Asupamu building.  There, we met the Aomori Shinkansen mascot,

who wouldn't stop holding my hand.  And then we bought a bunch of omiyage.  We also continued our tradition of eating ice cream with an apple flavored one.

On our way out we noticed that some store lady had made a cake for the Shinkansen mascot.  It was either the mascot's birthday or the person inside's birthday.  We didn't get the camera out fast enough, and only caught the lady taking the cake away.  I can only describe to you how entertaining it was to see that blue thing jumping up and down excitedly.

We tried to strategically time our exit with what was supposed to be a light show.  A pamphlet we had told us that the Asupamu building lights up all crazy every hour on the hour.  Instead, this is all we got:

About this time is also when it started to hail.  Therefore, while we waited for it to start flashing, we killed some time by going into a local patisserie Chandola and getting an apple Belgian waffle.

It was heavenly.

Apple waffle eaten, it was finally time for us to get back to Tokyo.  Between Aomori and Shin-Aomori, a blizzard suddenly developed outside, completing the weather roulette.  Fortunately, inside the station we were able to buy even more omiyage and then we were onto the train and back home.

We didn't know a thing about Aomori before we went, but now we know there are a million things we missed out on.  Car rentals in Aomori are super cheap, and it really makes getting around much easier if you have one.  Two places we really wanted to check out are Lake Towada and Mt. Hakkoda.  Lake Towada is a five hour bus ride away from Aomori, but they have onsen on the southern part of the lake as well as a winter festival which basically consists of drinking hot wine outside in a foot bath surrounded by lights.

Mt. Hakkoda sounds like a snowboarding dream with a fifteen minute ropeway that takes you 1.5 km up near the top.  From there you just spend the entire day making your way to the bottom.  Amazing.  There's a lot to see around Mt. Hakkoda apparently with crazy ice/snow formations and tons of scenic views.  If I get the chance, I will be back in Aomori again, but who knows when that will be.

One thing I do know is that Aomori apples are righteously delicious.