GO Noodle house & Sangkaya, Sunway Pyramid

Mum cooked the chinese version of jap chae for lunch with the korean noodles. Yummy :)

Beautiful CNY deco at Sunway Pyramid

Looks like an old Chinese street.

Met up with the girls for dinner at Go Noodle house that night.

We ordered two bowls of fried bean curd to be shared among us.

Jas opted for the spicy soup with mealballs while seawitch ordered the non-spicy one.

I prefer seafood and hence ordered the fish paste mee siam soup.

The noodles were delicious and so were the fish pastes.

I first visited this shop in Jaya One 3 years ago and I can't believe how big it has grown in such a short time. There's one in almost every big shopping mall.

After dinner, we went to Sangkaya for dessert. I was surprised that they now have several variations to their original coconut ice cream - green tea and a thai tea version. As usual, you can top it with nuts, corn flakes or roasted coconut flakes. Oishii~

The girls and I

:D

After that, I went for supper with the gang at a new mamak around the area.

Roti canai with dhal and curry....I was kinda sad that the roti canai was not the crispy kind.

The others all ordered a maggi mee goreng.

Ice kacang that's so good, we ordered two! As we didn't want any ice cream on top, the abang was nice enough to give us extra peanuts.

Then as D came all the way from Seremban, he was nice enough to bring us some Siew Bao :D

Blessed to have all these friends to keep me company :)

Family dinner

Mummy and daddy loves fresh coconut water and also buys them from a shop near our house. As for me, I only like the flesh. Lucky for me, there's no one to fight for them with me...so dad always keeps them for me like these! heehee...

That night we went for family dinner with 2 of my aunts at a seafood restaurant.

We ordered loads of seafood dishes that you cannot get in Japan! Curry fish head, spicy lala, salted egg yolk crab, spicy and sour crab.

Aaa......the curry fish head went so well with my rice. I'd pick this any time over butter chicken. Plus that lala......nom nom <3

Love salted egg yolk stuffs like this crab here. While the taste is good, the crabs are not as big as those from Green View.

Crabs cooked in sauce are good because then you can order some fried man tao to go with them! Osusume desu~

Invisible in Japan

I have always been proud of where I'm from and in general, myself. I speak several languages and that helps me to make friends with people from different cultures. I grew up with people of various races and religions. I'm used to hanging around people who are slightly different from me. Never in my life, have I thought that there would be a day where someone would pick to be my friend or not because of the way I look or ethnicity till I came to Japan.

While I have heard stories about how people who are interested in English language or language exchange in Japan are only interested in "white" people, I have never thought that it would be a problem for me because I speak English! I could not have been more wrong till one day when I joined a friend at a language exchange event when I first moved here.

There I was seated at a table with four other people, one of them is a Korean American who insists that he is American and he is not Korean when the Japanese man asked him if he is Korean. I think that the poor boy was confused between ethnicity and citizenship. But I guess, living in Japan, one would want to associate themselves more with American to appeal to people.

I immediately removed myself from that group to another table with just one girl. As she didn't look Japanese, I asked if the seat next to her was taken in English. She didn't understand me and I asked again in Japanese. I apologized and told her that she has Caucasian looking features and hence, assumed that she was a foreigner. She asked, "From which country?'. I replied, "UK?". She smiled and thanked me! After that she told me that she pitied me because I look Japanese and that it must be sad to have people think that I'm Japanese. I replied, "No, Asians have similar features, so I really don't mind if people think that I'm from Japan, China, Taiwan or Korea."

Soon after, two other girls joined us. I guess since there were four girls, it was easy for the conversation to change into us talking about love. The weirdest part for me was the fact that I was the only one who could converse properly in English but these other girls who couldn't hardly speak in English had white boyfriends...... Definitely, not a dating topic that I have experience with. Also, dating someone because of their skin colour is not a topic that I'm comfortable with.

After that, it was time for a table change. A guy there, who organised the event, was in charge or assigning people to different tables. My table only had one Japanese girl. I assumed that the others went to other tables after seeing that there were only 2 Asians on this table. I can tell that the girl had no interest to speak with me but she had no choice because she was already seated on the table.

This was definitely one of the worst experience I've ever had in my life. Never had I felt any form of discrimination like this towards my ethnicity and citizenship before. I guess in Japan, people pick friends based on their skin colour. Needless to say, that was the one and only time I have attended such an event.

After that incident, I try to stay way from people who tells me that they want to learn English and asks me to teach them. This is because I have realised that they only want to "befriend" me so that I could teach them English and not because that they genuinely want to be my friend. 

I also found out that one's experience of living here can be very different depending on your skin colour. My ang mo acquaintances have told me their experiences of having random strangers talk to them in restaurants or bar and get treated to free drinks. Wow......random strangers?! It's not a one time thing as I've heard similar stories from different people.

Another thing about being an Asian in Japan is that people naturally assume that you can't speak English or that even if you do, you can't be as good as the ang mo. Plus, we're neither blonde nor have blue eyes, so we don't look that interesting in the looks department too. I feel that in comparison, people are not that interested in getting to know us better.

But, what do I know? I only came to this conclusion based on my own experiences. Of course, different people will have different experiences based on the people they've met or situations they've been in.

Eating Japan - Snack series 12

1. Family Mart Chocolate peanuts

Always a great snack!

2. Assorted chocolate pack

 

I bought this assorted pack along with several packs of dark kit kat for my students and colleagues. My students wanted to bring chocolates to school for Halloween and I thought that I'd bring some for them too.

Here's what I got from them ;D

3. Aeon assorted fruits candy

I love hard candy because I enjoy chewing on them. So this pack here is for me to chew on at work when I'm marking.

4. Calbee Osatsu snack

 

Sweet potato snacks like these are the best. Reminds me keropok hahaha.....light and crispy.

5. Souvenirs from Taiwan

Got this from a friend who just went back to Taiwan recently. I absolutely love the Milano almond thousand layers as it was light, flaky and crispy. 

The crunchoco was good too but I prefered the Milano one.

6. Family Mart Ikafurai

A colleague of mine was obsessed with ikafurai and was buying them almost everyday at that time so I got influenced by her and bought one from family mart to try. It was good and very crunchy but I also assumed that it's loaded with salt and msg.

7. Glico Pocky chocolate midi

One can never go wrong with Pocky. I don't believe that they have a bad flavour/ product. Every product from them if top notch and this is the same.

I enjoyed the thick chocolate coating on the biscuit. It's not just the biscuit that's good, their chocolate is always of good quality too.

8. Goshoku

Bought this just because it was labelled as a healthy snack. I assumed that it was labelled as healthy because it was basically just dried squid and has low calories. To be honest, I won't be buying this again as it is not yummy. It has a tough texture too.

9. C1000 morning meal

Japan is high on morning meals like these for busy mornings. This one here has a lemon yoghurt flavour and hence is very refreshing. Really good for summer.

10. Chocola BB Sparkling

Decided to buy this one day when I was browsing through the health drinks section, just to try it out. I've always wondered why is it labelled for beauty when it only contains mostly Vitamin B and C. While I'm not sure of it's beauty enchancing properties, I'm very sure that it works like red bull because this drink is high in sugar

11. Natural Lawson Purple smoothie

Natural Lawson's purple smoothie with maqui berry. In Japan, when you wanna treat yourself to a nice sweet drink, you can opt for 'healthier' versions like this. To be honest, I don't know how much healthier they are compared to a normal bottle of fruit juice since they all have sugars in them. But still, it is a nice way to cheat myself into believing that this is healthy and good for me.

12. Family Mart green bean snack

Here's another way of me lying to myself that I'm having a healthy snack. I mean.....this is made of green beans! It's green, it's supposed to be healthy!

Not really.

13. Topvalu thick cut chips in sour cream and onion flavour

Sour cream and onion flavoured chips are actually pretty rare in Japan. I was kind of excited to see this flavour actually as it's something that I have not had in a long time and it's yummy.

14. Lawson umaibo -mentai flavour

Umaibo in another packaging. Every convenient store seem to have their own packaging and they're all good. Well, it's basically the same thing inside anyways.

15. Rosenheim cookies

I received this book of cookies from a colleague who gave them to me as a thank you gift for the help that I have offered her. It was really sweet of her as I was not expecting anything in return.

There were 2 different biscuits in the box and they were all individually packed, which was a good thing. Since they were individually packed, they remained fresh and are convenient as snacks at work.

Ultraman

Met up with H at 1U to catch a bus to Genting. I arrived slightly earlier and decided to walk around for a bit. That's when I spotted their CNY deco that's not quite complete yet.

It's sad that I missed CNY this year but it was nice that I got to see some CNY deco in various malls.

I was lucky enough to be get a chance to ride on Genting's new cable car that just started operation a month ago. I love the change in scenery from the old cable cars. Then new one seemed a lot steeper and higher than the old one but also had nicer views.

Arrived at the hall, greeted everyone and ST san was nice enough to share his meal card with us so that we could get a free lunch. Hence, we went to a Chinese restaurant nearby and I ordered this kong fu chao.

We went back with some extra time so spare before the show. TH san asked me to help him draw things on these white envelopes that he got from the local stuff to fill them up with money for the staffs. So I figured that they must be otoshi-dama, Instead of ang pao, they were provided with envelopes. So I drew some Ultraman characters on them and wrote the words otoshi-dama in japanese.

While I watched only Part 2 of the show, it was still great because I remembered bits and pieces from the script that appeared in this show. The action stunts were great as usual and this time, the monster for the finale was really big! I like how the monster could actually grow in size! Very impressed!

After the show, we had some snacks before taking the cable car down. I got churros from the new mall in Genting and it was delicious~ Hot and crunchy.

While the churros was good, nothing beats Rotiboy!! hahaha.....mum and dad bought some for us when they came to pick us up! :D <3

Ureshii~!!! :)

Jin Xuan dim sum with family

Possibly my favourite weekend activity, dim sum with family members~

Here at my fav. dim sum place - Jin Xan.

I prefer the fried or baked dim sum to the steam ones. Egg tart, fried fish balls, prawn rolls and char siew sou. :D Nom nom nom....

Of course, we have the steamed ones too......various kinds of steam fish or prawn pastes, meat rolls, buns and dumplings.

The highlight for was definitely this salted egg yolk, scallop and prawn roll! <3

Wefie with the family <3 :D

After brunch, I went home for a bowl of green bean soup and waited for cousin to finish Dharma class so that we can go for.....

.....more desserts! 

Waffle with earl grey and chocolate ice cream at Inside scoop.

Super good, really love the waffles and ice cream at Inside scoop!

For dinner, we went to Sushi Zanmai for some sushi. I feel like visiting Sushi Zanmai is like a routine for us. Every time when cousin comes back to KL for a visit, we go for sushi.

Some chuka wakame and hotate to start with~

Then some sushi......

I miss how pretty and fancy sushi could be

And one more tamago sushi for myself because I was hungry hahaha