Tsukemen

Lunch with colleagues one day was at this ramen place nearby which supposedly serves really good ramen, according to a colleague of mine.

The menu~

I've been craving for a tsukemen ever since I came and decided to finally order one. This one here came with 2 pieces of char siew, a beautiful egg and seaweed.

Here's my dipping soup which contained a lot of onions and was extremely flavourful.

I'm super glad that I finally got my tsukemen fix and it's likely that I won't be having one in a while. While I do enjoy tsukemen, I find the dipping soup a bit too salty and as I'm a slow eater, my soup usually cools down too fast!

But yea, I highly recommend this to anyone who loves noodles to try tsukemen.

Home-cooked gyoza (cheat)

Saw some pre-made gyoza on the freezer section and decided to try it. I bought the brand Nipponman. A pack came with 12 pieces of gyoza, a packed of sauce for the cooked gyoza and a packet of sauce for cooking the gyoza.

So first, I laid out all the gyoza on a hot pan with some oil and then poured in the packet of sauce for cooking the gyoza  in.

 

After several minutes, you get this nice "wings" at the bottom of the pan.

Before serving, I broke them up into individual portions.

And yes....SUCCESS!!! The perfect gyoza~ with a nice brown bottom and crunchy "wings"! :D

Besides looking amazing, it tastes super good too!!!

While I did not make them from scratch, I was still super proud that they came out looking soooo beautiful!

腹八分目 渋谷

Visited 腹八分目 (Hara hachibunme), which is an Izakaya located at Shibuya (渋谷公園通り店) with S and his friends on the last weekend I had before work starts. The address is as follows:

〒150-0041 Tokyo, Shibuya, Jinnan, 1 Chome−22−10, 皆川 ビル 8F

Took the train to Shibuya on a Friday evening and there were so many people that our line messages weren't getting through.

Met up with S at the green train before dinner with I-san to try and get my bank card to work.

As Hachiko was just nearby, I couldn't help myself but ask for a picture next to Hachiko.

Finally~ my first picture with hachiko!

We went for dinner at 腹八分目, which seems to be famous for their friend chicken dish!

On seating, we were served this plate of salted popcorn and fried crackers.

Gyouzas!!! <3

The famous fried chicken! OMG~ the serving was soooo huge compared to the other dishes.

Okonomiyaki! Can never say no to this~

A mini 1/2 and 1/2 pizza. I'm not sure what they were but I think it was margarita and basil/pesto sauce pizza. I only tried the one with the green sauce and it was good. At first we thought that huge dollop was mayonaise but no, it was some sort of light cream.

Salmon carpaccio with avocado, which was really good!

My second order of cranberry chuhai because S thought that I didn't enjoyed my first honey lemon chuhai due it's slight bitter taste......so he volunteered to take over from there.

Not bad, it was the first time I actually finished an alcoholic beverage all by myself.

Some super spicy chicken dish with cabbage.

Korean pancake with cheese~ omg, that cheese was sooo good! I should try to do this myself too!

This here is another chicken dish that's topped with various sauces, mayonnaise and aonori. No idea what it's called but the sauce was good.

Overall, it was an interesting experience for me as I've always wanted to visit an izakaya. Plus it was interesting to see what do others do at an izakaya! Hopefully, I'll have more experiences to share in the future.

Interesting first week with the kids

Day 1:

Kid A: You sound like how Singaporean speak English! Where are you from?

Kid B: You sound like the air stewardess from Cathay Pacific!

M: Why won't you eat your lunch?

Kid C: My mum accidentally packed my sister's lunch in my bag.

M: It's ok, just have it.....

Kid C: No...I'm not hungry!

M: Here's a snack!

M: blah blah blah

Kids: Teacher, Kid D has fallen asleep!

M: *looks over and thinks if my lesson is that boring* -_-!!!

Day 4:

Was trying to get the kids attention and I decided to raise my voice. I soon learn that my voice is not as loud as the kids and they cannot hear me. But I did tell them that they should listen to me when I speak and not make me raise my voice ever again. Not sure if the message got through to them though.

Bonus: my miso ramen from lunch a month ago with my colleagues. Look at how thick that soup is~!!! Best thing ever on a very cold day at work~!

Terrine matcha

Extremely strong matcha flavour cake.

Spotted this during one of my grocery shopping rounds and decided to get it.

It was one of the richest matcha flavoured cake that I have ever taste! Really good~

Night sakura at Sumida River

After dinner, we headed to Sumida River where we got to see beautiful yozakura and got a great view of Skytree.

Loving this view.........

The trees were at their full-bloom state when we were there and there were so many people enjoying their hanami under the trees.

Look at the crowd! Wish I could join them too~!

We were trying to get artistic shots of the Skytree hahaha

Look at all that sakura~ and the train that just happened to be passing by as I snapped this.

Soooo pretty~!!!!

After that, we stopped by 711 for some ice cream. This is the Haagen-Dazs Crunchy Crunch Green Tea Cumble which is a limited edition offer.

Everything limited edition is always good.

One bite of that and yea, it was super delicious! hahaha......kinda reminds me of the green tea pocky. I'm gonna buy more Haagen Dazs limited edition ice cream from now on.

After that, as we were heading back, I realised that I had lost my Pasmo card. Just my luck as I had just topped up another 6000yen to it at the station. There's a total of about 7000yen in it. We tried retracing our steps to find it but to no avail. 

Remember my omikuji? Oh....how accurate it was! I only wished that other good parts of the omikuji were just as accurate.

Eating Japan - Bread series 1

For a country that eat a lot of rice, Japan's bread are really good! 

I like how fluffy they are and that they do not stick on to your teeth when you chew on them.

#1 Yamasaki is a very popular bread brand in Japan and they sell many varieties of bread. Spotted this one here with a Kumamon on it and that's very good marketing strategy! I got this because I Kumamon caught my attention before I saw the words "milk bun with caramel cream". And the bread is HUGEE~!!! It's almost the size of my keyboard! Really good on a day when you're super hungry!

#2 I love this mini red bean buns from Lawson. I first had them in 2013 in Okayama and I've been loving them since then! The texture of the bun was good and the red bean filling not too sweet! This makes for a really good snack!

#3 This is another series of mini buns from Lawson - mini chocolate cream buns.

Instead of red bean, it's has a chocolate custard filling. While this is good too, nothing can beat the red bean buns!

Asakusa dinner

I was supposed to meet up with Mish for dinner and night sakura. I went to Asakusa early as I was free that afternoon and wanted to pray at the temple first before meeting up with her.

On the way there, I spotted the Asakusa Tourist Centre and decided to head up for a view of the city from their free observatory.

You get a nice view of Skytree and the Nakamise from the open air observatory.

You can also dine at the restaurant at the observatory. New on their menu was these two bowl of eel and rice. I snapped this picture in the elavator just in case Mish and I had no idea where to grab dinner. Lol~

While there were still a few tourists around, it's the first time I've seen the Kaminarimon area that empty!

This could be because the shops at the nakamise have closed.

Making my way to the temple and realised that this was also the first time I do not see any smoke near this area.

I prayed and got an omikuji for myself. It says suekichi and while it is still kichi, I tied it up because I want things to get better soon.

This was on my omikuji. It says that any lost article would be difficult to retrieve and I soon found that this was indeed very true.

Found a little stall on the left that sells these cute looking sweet potato baked goods as I was exiting and was tempted to buy one.

 

For 240yen a piece, I felt that it was a bit expensive but Asakusa is a tourist area.

After one bite of the baked sweet potato, I knew why they charged that price! It was AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS~!!!! You can really taste the yummy goodness of the sweet potato in it ~!!! I highly recommend this shop called Oimoyasan!

After that I met up with Mish and we went for dinner at this place near Asakusa that serves eel~!!! Lol~

We were walking past the shop and checking out the menu when 2 japanese walked out and told us that the food was good.

We both ordered the unameshi with extra eel. Sorry got the blur pic above.

Some of the condiments for the eel on the table~

Our set!

My dinner mate~

Me~

My eel rice bow. Luckily we added eel because it was a little tiny.

You can have the eel rice just as it is or have it with dashi soup~

This is soooo good on a cold night! And that dashi, super delicious~