Ultraman Festival at Sunshine City Ikebukuro

Back here again for the Ultraman Festival at Sunshine City,

This time, SW joined us and we were lucky that ST-san had an extra ticket.

I always enjoy looking at how detailed these models are.

I always enjoy looking at the evil Ultraman.

And here's one of my fav., Belial.

These "life size" models are great for those who enjoy looking into the details and great for pictures.

The Ultraman are life sized but everything else are tiny as you can imagine.

We also caught a show that was directed by K san. I even got to say hi to him at the end of the show. It's been a year since I've seen him. His shows are always very enjoyable.

After that we went for early dinner at a Vietname restaurant.

Had some interesting pho, including a cold pho.

I guess the concept of the cold tom yum pho came from the Japanese cold noodles. But it is too weird for me. I prefer my tom yum hot!

Food day in Ikebukuro

Early in the morning, I cooked bah kut teh for Mish and I. Here's my take on the famous Malaysian dish. I think I did a pretty good job. Heehee.....

At noon, I met up with Yh for lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant were Yh had porridge while I had tom yum pho.

As we were walking around, we discovered that there was a Hokkaido food fair going on and we got super excited!

To start off, we had a pumpkin ice cream which was super delicious and I absolutely love those freeze dried pumpkin on the ice cream!

After that, we went to for sushi at Midori sushi. My first visit to this famous shop.

And I can see why it's so popular. The sushi were fresh, delicious and the prices decent!

As if we didn't have enough sushi, we went back to the Hokkaido food fair and bought this extravagant crab bento! The most expensive bento I have ever purchased!!!! But the crabs were really good even though we had the bento cold and out in the cold winter.

We also bought this Fromage double cheese cake from LeTAO but what we did not know was that the cake was frozen solid!!! So we couldn't dig into it there. Instead I bought it over and brought it home!

Random happenings

I bought this juice from Ginza Six. I've always wondered how this taste and decided to buy one when Mum and dad visited. It's actually very sweet and you can really feel the orange flavour. It's supposed to be all natural so I'm really amazed at how sweet it is.

hahah...snapped this in class when my students weren't looking. I found it super cute that they've circled my name and wrote special next to it!

Met up with T san and the others after about 8 months since we last saw each other!!! So happy to see them again! They're always so nice and T san always treat me to a nice meal every time I see him in Tokyo. This time we had tonkatsu in Hikarie, Shibuya.

After that, we moved to another restaurant to grab some dessert while we waited for K san to arrive.

I'm really thankful to have met T san and to be able to work with him previously.

The next day, I went for chinese food with C and Yh at Ikebukuro as Yh and I were both craving for fried pumpkin coated with salted egg yolk!

While the food was really good, I was extremely shock to find the the restaurant actually serves dog meat and so does the previously chinese restaurant! So it's safe to say that I'm not gonna revisit.

This dish has an interesting name- kou sui chi, which means saliva chicken hahaha....

Yh has been craving for peking duck and so we ordered a duck dish too!

This here is my fav garlic shrimp~!

Only three of us and we ordered 5 dishes, including porridge!

After that we went to look at some game arcade in the area which was a pretty eye opening experience for me as I've never really explored one like this before. And then we grabbed some desserts at Sunshine city.

The desserts were lovely and it was nice to catch up with everyone.

After tea, Yh and I went for shabu-shabu dinner.

As if we have not had enough food, we ordered the buffet course!

Meeting up with M and baby

The last time I met up with M, she was pregnant with baby and few months later, I'm having lunch with her and baby Reon.

We grabbed lunch at Baqet where they served all you can eat bread with your main meal.

They also served a plate of salad.

This time, we both ordered the hamburger lunch.

I can't believe how much has changed since I know M. When I first know her, she was married but haven't had her wedding ceremony. Now, she had her wedding, got pregnant and gave birth~!!!

I'm so happy for her, that she has a wonderful hubby and a beautiful family.

Girls day out in Ikebukuro

Hanged out with the girls at Ikebukuro and we basically just spent the entire day eating.

First stop was Din Tai Fung, where we got to enjoy good dim sum and Chinese tea that we all missed.

The pan fried radish cake was absolutely scrumptious. It's soo good that we ordered a second serving. 

While the fried rice that we had ordered was a pretty plain one, it was good too.

Of course, the star of the meal were the xiao long baos.

I never knew that there were so many different flavours such a hotate, kani miso, mentaiko, etc. And they were all really good. 

We also had some sui mai but I've never really enjoyed their version of siu nai before because I feel that the layer of dumpling skin right below the prawn is too thick and hard. 

After that we had some desserts too. Here's my ai yu bing to help cool me down on a hot summer day. 

As if we didn't already had enough food, after this we went for standing sushi and immediately after we went for Chinese food. 

Here are some of the food that we had at the restaurant.  

The fried man tou were a bit too oily. 

This salted egg yolk fried pumpkin was delicious. Definitely my favourite dish of the night! I miss the taste of salted egg yolk.

Yummy spicy prawns. The portion here is really big. 

Group pic with the pretty girls. 

We also ordered a mushroom soup that night. As I said the portion is huge so 1 order was sufficient for the 3 of us. 

Ain Soph Soar Ikebukuro

I've wanted to try this place for quite some time now after watching you tube reviews about this place. 

Website: http://ain-soph.jp/soar/

I visited this restaurant one weekend with Pat and the food was disappointing for the both of us even though the reviews were so good. 

I ordered the pasta lunch which came with a soup and a salad, at 1,680 yen (before tax). The soup was ok but I didn't enjoy the salad. 

My pumpkin pasta which was plain. 

Pat ordered their waffle which didn't taste very good according to her. So it's safe to say that we don't be returning for a second visit. 

After lunch, we went to shop around Sunshine city and saw that the crepe stall there was having a promotion for crepes so we went to queue for some too. While the queue was long, it moved fairly quickly. 

My order of an apple custard crepe. 

After shopping around all the Disney themed and clothes shop, we grabbed dinner at 大阪王将.

We both got the gyoza which to me is one of my favourite here in Japan.