Lunch gathering

Attended a gathering with J's friends.

His friends who came from Ibaraki, brought their cute little baby boy along. Here is me trying to fix his clothes properly to take a nice pic.

It was the start of the COVID19 period in Japan, near the end of Jan 2020. During this time, we were travelling without masks because all the masks were sold out. We didn't know that this shortage would last for months when it first happened.

Here I am enjoying lunch, thinking that after lunch, we can easily buy some masks at some bigger drug store chains in the area.

Food was Japanese teishoku style and this cafe served more vegeables than meat.

At the end of the meal, we also added desserts.

After that, we went mask hunting but were unable to find any. Every drug store that we entered had no masks or alcohol wipes. I did manage to find some hand sanitizers and that was all I bought.

After that, we went for some Taiwanese desserts.

Haven't had something like this in 2 years. Hence, it was really refreshing and nice.

We were lucky that this small little shop could fit all of us.

 

Sotetsu Fresa Inn Kawasaki-Higashiguchi

Formerly known as Hotel Sunroute Kawasaki, the hotel is now known as Sotetsu Fresa Inn Kawasaki-Higashiguchi.

Website: https://fresa-inn.jp/en/kawasaki/

Just looking at the bathroom, I'm liking this room. While this is still the standard compact bathroom of most japanese business hotels, there is a wider area for the sink between the bathtub and the toilet.

Here are the hotel amenities.

This here is the standard double room. As you can see, the bed is not too close to the table too so there is a bit more room for walking.

The bed.

The table area. I like that the TV is up on the wall and not taking up useful table space.

Overall, the hotel is clean and I had a good night's sleep. Highly recommend this for tourists too as this hotel is near to Kawasaki station, where there's lots to explore.

Rakuspa Tsurumi

Next morning, the first thing we did was head to Rakuspa Tsurumi for onsen~

Website: http://rakuspa.com/tsurumi/access/

There are free buses to and from Kawasaki station and make sure you are there early as the queue gets long pretty quickly.

The entrance fees was 1480yen for an adult. Once you've entered, pick up a bag of towels and clothing of your choice. There are various rooms with different hot stones, manga corner, food section and onsen. There were many families there who were relaxing around the lounge area, reading manga or just watching tv. Seems like they were ready to spend their entire day there. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the onsen there and will definitely return again.

After that we took the free bus back and had tempura don from Kaneko Hannosuke which in my opinion is one of the best in the Kanto region.

After some shopping, we were all tired and decided to head home early. I feel that every time after I go to an onsen, I'll feel tired but have a really good night's sleep and feel refreshed the next day.

Food food food, in Kawasaki

One day, we went to Mcd and I guess we really went all to try out the different snacks there: L fries, 15 pieces of nuggets, cinnamon caramel bite and a black chocolate pie.

Of course, everything was delicious. The only things that I didn't enjoy as much was that the cinnamon caramel bites were too sweet for my liking.

For late lunch, we went to an okinawa restaurant at Kawasaki. It was my first time trying Okinawa food. As I'm not a big fan of goya, I didn't really enjoy the goya with egg stir fry.

I thought that the dishes were ok. My favourite is this umi budo which is actually a kind of seaweed. I really enjoyed the texture.

For tea break, we grabbed Bake cheese tarts. They were selling a limited edition milk tea flavour and we decided to try that too. I feel that Bake has changed their recipe as their cheese tart has become more watery recently and I feel like I prefer their old recipe.

Later that night, we had omu rice for dinner. 

I'm not really a fan of omu rice In general, I think I have omu rice once a year on average.

Though I do like the fuwa fuwa tamago on top. :)

In general, I feel like, I prefer fried rice with more ingredients in my omu rice and more toppings. Meanwhile, most shops serve tomato fried rice with sauce and not much ingredients in the rice or toppings.

Vietnamese food & pancakes

Met up with ST san for lunch at ベトナム料理専門店 サイゴン キムタン 川崎本店.

Website: https://saigon-kimthanh.gorp.jp/

We ordered a few dishes to share and they were all delicious. Unfortunately, I was too busy eating that I only managed to snap pictures of there two dishes here. We had pork, porridge, shrimp and noodles too.

After lunch, we all went for Dutch pancake at Rosie's cafe. 

I think it's the first time I've had Dutch pancakes and I really like the slightly burnt, crispy parts.

I would definitely like to have more Dutch pancakes in the future but I would love to share it and not have the whole thing to myself.

Kawasaki Halloween 2018

This year I found out that Kawasaki holds a yearly Halloween costume competition and the cash prize is BIG!!!

As we were there on the day of the contest, the place was packed with people who are all dressed up.

Even the docomo store there has it's employees dressed in a costume.

heehee, at the station, we spotted the cutest Spiderman costume ever.

As you can see in the pictures, there are even some people dressed up as a Starbucks iced latte.

The parade has a specific course and we got a nice spot near the beginning.

All the contestants have to walk along a specific path for the parade.

We were truly impressed by some of the costumes.

I wonder how much these people spent on their costumes. Some of them are really elaborate.

After the parade, some of the people are nice enough to hang around for people to snap pictures with them.

After that, we popped into a cafe nearby for a quick bite.

We had some french toasts and omelette.

I've not been to Shibuya for Halloween but I think Kawasaki is a great place to visit it you just want to have a look at other people's costumes as there is probably less crowd and less dangerous.

This ojisan here has one of my favourite costume of the day! Very innovative~ and I wondered if he made it himself.

Kawasaki Warehouse

At Kawasaki, there is a place called Kawasaki Warehouse.

Website: https://www.warehousenet.jp/store/storeinfo.php?id=210

You can easily spot the building from afar and as you get nearer you see this Kowloon sign. I guess they were trying to imitate the Kowloon walled city.

The entrance looks spooky and we definitely got a shocked when the door opened automatically.

As you enter, you get this spooky feel that you're entering an old building. 

There is also a speaker that plays sounds of the market and people speaking in cantonese.

Any idea where does this path leads to?

The parking lot.

Everything here was made to look old and dirty intentionally.

On the second floor, there's an area that imitates a food court.

This here has got to be the ugliest looking vending machine in the whole of Japan.

As we move further in, we found the arcade area which didn't really had that many people there at that time.

Overall, it's a pretty interesting place to visit if you are in the area as it definitely doesn't feel like Japan there.