Izukyu Shimoda lunch

End of the summer trip to Izu. This time, we visited Shimoda.

This is the Izukyu Shimoda station.

Walked to a restaurant nearby called Katsu (勝).

Website: http://izu-katsu.com/

It was a small restaurant with a small menu for lunch.

We were seated at a cozy corner. As you can see there was no one next to us.

They serve various seafood bowls.

I ordered the seasonal 地魚丼 which had a bit of everything.

J ordered the 下田丼.

Itadakimasu~ the fish was fresh and super good! A good place to visit if you are nearby the area.

After lunch, we walked back to the station to catch the bus to the aquarium.

Emergency food - Curry Rice

I bought this pack of curry rice as part of my emergency food stash. I thought that it would be nice to be able to have hot food.

This pack here comes with a self heating set up.

Everything is already in this pack and all you have to do is follow the instructions on the back.

Here are all the items that came with the pack.

You have spoon, wet wipes, a pack of curry, cooked rice, a heating pad and this pack of water that's use to start the heating process.

You place the pack of curry and cooked rice in the big zip lock bag provided, together with the heating pad. After that, you pour in the water from the water pack and zip up the bag.

You will slowly see steam coming up and just leave the bag as it is to heat up the food.

Once it s done, pour the curry onto the rice and this is how it looks like.

The taste is pretty good for a pack of food that is packed a long time ago and one that I did not need to do much to enjoy. This would be good for winter.

Various meals in Sept

Lunch time with a colleague from Seattle whom I've only spoke to online and have not met in person.

He was in Tokyo for a holiday with some friends and decided to met up with me while here.

We went for lunch at Sushi no Midori and ordered a fancy sushi set. It's been a year since I visited and enjoyed their sushi set. Everything was yummy. I especially enjoyed the hotate, uni and anago. Out meal also came with dessert ice cream. 

After meeting with a client one day, I need a place to work and ended up in this fancy cafe which was filled with other businessmen or ladies catching up with their friends. I ordered an orange juice, which was exactly the size you see in this picture. I have not drank any yet. hahhaa.....

Another work day lunch with my colleagues. We just finished a meeting with a client and was on our way back to the office when my colleague brought us to his favourite tsukemen shop behind the station. The soup is soup based and as with most tsukemen, it came with thick noodles. I don't really like thick noodles as they're hard to eat. I prefer ramen compared to tsukemen. I prefer places that allow me to heat up my soup halfway through the meal as my soup always get cold before I finish the meal with tsukemen.

I found that Nissin had collaborated with the famous Ebi Soba Ichigen from Sapporo to create this cup ramen. I bought this the moment I saw it at the konbini and had this on a busy day at work together with the bread below. I usually have a cup ramen with bread as just a cup ramen itself is not enough.

Took this picture at Don quijote when I was passing by with Kiu She asked me why are there so many people surrounding this pile of goods. This is the "time sale" area. So when it is time, the staff with shout that t's time sale and remove the baskets that are covering the goods. The people around are there waiting to snatch the goods, the moment the baskets are removed.

Went for dessert with Kiu at Hikarie. I ordered this fancy anmitsu, which was good. It's been a long time since I've had one.

Kiu ordered this fancy looking fruit cake.

These 2 here are 2 different grape flavoured cakes. While they're nice, I prefer cakes with more texture and layers. In Japan, cakes usually have a sponge base and is topped with cream.

Another busy day lunch. I bought this big box of salad and a cup of yoghurt. It's rare that I have such a healthy lunch.

This here is another work day lunch on the shinkasen. I prefer to eat on the train when I'm travelling to some place far for a meeting with the client in the afternoon.

This here is from a deli where we had late lunch after a very hectic morning which led to a trip to the hospital.

We opted for the 3 sides set and was glad that they had some pretty good selections. Everything that we ordered was yummy.

Yuzu flavoured tablette from Vanilla Beans. While this is good, I prefer their Sparkling one.

Walked past this Taiwanese stall and decided to give it a try as I wasn't feeling well and was craving for some porridge. The porridge was not bad, it's the thick kind which I haven't had in a long time.

This here is another work day lunch with my then manager. We grabbed late lunch together at a chinese restaurant

Red bean bun before my Japanese lesson.

Like edamame so I decided to give this snack a try. Nope, didn't like it.

Lunch buffet at one of my fav lunch places.

Love the curries here and I like that the naan is served fresh and hot.

Meals by myself

It's extremely rare that I eat several meals by myself all in a day.

In the afternoon, I had a meeting nearby the Penang Restaurant. Hence, I decided to stop by for lunch. I ordered their asam laksa lunch set. It was interesting to see that it came with a bowl of rice hahaha....

I finished lunch quickly and as I didn't want to occupy the entire table by myself during busy lunch hour, I left to Tully's nearby.

Managed to work a but while I enjoyed a piece of cake before the meeting. There were several other salaryman like me who were there working on their laptops.

After that meeting, I had another meeting later in the afternoon. As it would be more efficient to travel directly to the place and wait for the meeting time, I traveled there early and grabbed a meal at Royal Host. There was no other place nearby with seats where I could work except here.

When you're moving around, it's best to arrive early in case there are any delays in the train. I will usually find a cafe nearby to catch up on work while I wait for my colleagues to arrive or as I wait for the meeting time.

This day was the only time I had so many meals outside by myself on a work day.

Food makes people happy

Had a tough day at work and my day was definitely made better by good food with my colleague and friend.

Went for lunch with my colleague and she was nice enough to listen to my problems.

Later in the evening, went for dinner with another friend. We chatted over dinner, where we had some really good aged beef. 

Then we went to near the station for some desserts. I'm really grateful for good people around me and good food.

Vanilla Beans, Yokohama

Early in the morning, we went to Zou no hana for some Malaysian food at the Malaysian food fest.

There were many people and the queue was super long. We had to queue in this long line to buy food from the stalls. It's not like there's a separate queue for each different stall.

Sadly, we didn't get any nasi lemak though we were really craving some as the stall forgot to bring their microwave. So we went for curry rice instead but this was also cold. We got some curry puffs and a bowl of pan mee. It's been a long time since I had a pan mee and realised that I missed it when I had it.

Feeling unsatisfied, we walked to Vanilla Beans for some desserts.

We were lucky that the place was still relatively empty when we arrived.

This is my 3rd time visiting and each time, I get seated at the same table! I'm thankful for that as I like this seat the best!

We ordered a chocolate drink and their limited Vanilla Beans Parfait.

Website: http://vanillabeans.yokohama/#6

They only serve 10 of this per day and I highly recommend this as it's the best parfait ever! It's super chocolaty and you get to enjoy all the from the cacao bean to the different chocolate components.

Yes, I definitely agree that Chocolate makes me happy!