Anniversary Dinner

It's been 2 awesome years of marriage last Tuesday to an exceptionally awesome man! We went to dinner on Wednesday night to celebrate at a place called Kochan's Steakhouse Rapan in Settsumotoyama. It is very close to Settsumotoyama JR station, being a (?)3 minute walk from the North exit. It is on the first floor of one of the small buildings so it was a little hard to find with a small sign downstairs in the dark. Thanks to Google maps we got there!

It is a smallish place (seating about 15 people) with interesting decor. There was Wild West and Japanese themed decor as well as a random snowboard. It is teppanyaki style where they cook the food on hot iron griddles. We chose to get Special Wagyu fillet steak for our main dish. You receive a starter, soup, salad, rice/bread, miso soup, dessert and tea/coffee with your meal. You can change the rice to garlic fried rice by paying an additional 200yen.

 

Roasted beef and shiso leaf, smoked salmon with capsicum and a mustard mayonaise sauce

Shiso leaves are packed with flavour. The taste reminds me a lot of coriander. It was a great match with the beef though. I don't eat salmon so I can't comment on it. =P

Spinach soup

It was more a spinach and pumpkin soup, but tasted absolutely divine. The seasoning of the soup was perfect. 

Chef putting on a show whilst cooking on the hot plates

Kobe beef with veggies and garlic.

In addition to what you see in the picture above, we were given a piece of konnyaku and tofu cooked on the griddle which were absolutely delicious! Not a fan of tofu but I really liked the piece they served me. It was caramelised on the outside, soft on the inside and served with a super tasty creamy sauce and placed onto a dash of soy sauce on my plate. The meat is cooked medium rare and is very soft to eat! The middle of the meat is on the cooler side for my liking although it must be how they have to cook it/ eat it here. It was the same when I ate Kobe beef with Sam's sister.

Garlic fried rice

To be honest, I didn't think the garlic fried rice anything special. It was basically fried rice with deep fried garlic pieces mixed through at the end. It needed some more soy sauce and moisture in my opinion. I prefer homemade fried rice. =P

Sparkling wine jelly and check out the cool spoon.

 Chefs told us it was wine jelly to which I wasn't looking looking forward to eating it as I don't like the taste of wine. It was surprisingly very good! The taste of the wine wasn't strong at all, it wasn't too sweet and had a tingly sensation in the mouth just like bubbles in a carbonated drink have, hence why I believe it was sparkling wine jelly. Eating the strawberry with the jelly somehow took the dessert to a whole nother dimension. If only there had been more strawberries.

Cool cup

 Overall it was a great experience with delicious food and a great atmosphere. The chefs were very friendly and you get to watch the chefs put on a show as they cook your food.

Exploring Fukuoka

During our stay in Fukuoka we were blessed to stay at Sam's family friend's place on Nokonoshima Island. Nokonoshima Island is a 10 minute ferry ride from the main island and is about 12km in circumference. Their house is situated right next to the water, so as you fall asleep and wake up you hear the sound of water crashing against the rocks. It was very relaxing.

Nokonoshima Island. Taken on Sunday as we were leaving on the ferry.

Our Saturday began with a lovely sleep-in and then a walk around the island. The weather was still very cold and cloudy so you couldn't see too far across the water. It was a good walk nonetheless. On the way up the mountain, there are many yuzu (an asian citrus fruit) orchards. There were a few areas where you could see remnants of eaten yuzu. Not sure if someone had picked a few and eaten them or if it was a wild boar. On the way up it started raining ice!! Haha.. Sounds kind of strange when I put it that way but it was. It wasn't snow but tiny pieces of ice as if the rain had frozen on it's way down. On the way down around the other side of the mountain it is basically just forest before you hit the coast. We came across a mother goat bleating at us whilst it's kid just stared from afar. When we went to take a photo of the mother, it turned it's head then ran off to it's kid whilst leaving us with a memorable image of it's bottom shooting out pellets.

Encountered a few of these signs when walking around the island warning people of wild boars that may suddenly charge out.

The vine has either crept out of the window or inside it.

Can you guess what's happening in this picture?? It's an icicle that formed on the faucet.

Cool lotus flower root drain

Next we went off to visit Ohori Park. Before entering the park we looked around for a little while to find somewhere to get lunch and ended up settling for udon. The lady working there was very friendly. She kept talking to us (basically just Sam as she only spoke Japanese) and giving us stuff like pollution masks, magazines about Fukuoka and a fan.

My katsu-don set.

We read one review on tripadvisor about Ohori Park that made me laugh "Nothing special - It's a park like anywhere else". I would have to say it is definitely not just a park like anywhere else. It is a very big park with a large pond of water in the centre. There is a path that crosses the centre of the lake, which is where most of my pictures below are taken from. You will also find the remnants of Fukuoka castle, Ohori Park Japanese garden and Fukuoka art museum adjacent to the park.

Japanese seagulls. They have a little grey spot behind their eyes.

Around the park there were a few different stones like this with games for kids to play.

Distance markers along the jogging/running track.

Next we visited Fukuoka art museum. It was 200 yen (about AU$2) to see the permanent exhibition. There isn't a huge collection and no English description of the artwork so you can get through it fairly quickly. I really enjoyed the modern artwork. They had a special temporary exhibition that was quite pricey and soo big that half of the collection had to be shown at another venue.

Outside Fukuoka art museum.

Big pumpkin outside the musuem.

Afternoon tea time! We went to a cake shop called Jacques near where we had lunch.

Caramel eclair

Some caramel mousse cake with pieces of apple

Both the eclair and caramel mousse cake were delicious!! The caramel mousse cake did need some crunch to it though. After afternoon tea we met up with Sam's family friends and went to dinner at an amazing Moroccan place called Bistro Bar Crescent. The food was really good and I had the best cous cous ever. There was mainly one guy running the show. He was very friendly and helpful. I would definitely go back if I lived around there.

Fukuoka part 1: Ramen.. here we come!

Sam got last Friday off as he had to work a previous weekend so we went down to Fukuoka to visit a family friend of Sam's over the weekend. It was extra cold on Friday and it started to snow on the bus ride from Kobe to Kansai airport. Our flight was a little delayed due to snow but we arrived safe and sound after about a 1 hour and 10 minute flight.

Our first task was to get some ramen!! Fukuoka is famous for their tonkotsu ramen. A lady from church recommended a ramen shop/franchise called Ichiran, which is where we went for lunch. You purchase food tickets from a machine at the front of the store and proceed inside to find a vacant seat by looking on a panel located at the front of the shop.  Ichiran has something called "Flavour concentration system" where you sit in individual booths. You customise your ramen by filling out your preferences for the different components on an order sheet. For example, flavour strength, richness, meat/ no meat and noodle hardness. You hand this sheet in along with your meal tickets through a small window in front of you. After your meal arrives the waiters then let down a bamboo screen in front of that window to allow you to concentrate on the flavour in your little booth. If you need noodle refills or extra toppings you can call them by pressing a button within the booth.

The ramen at Ichiran is similar to Ippudo as they are both Hakata ramen. The individual components do vary slightly. The noodles were a little thicker, the cut of pork was shoulder (as opposed to belly) and the soup base was a little different. Overall I prefer Ippudo's ramen. Ippudo also has their special marinated soft boiled egg.

Ichiran ramen with kikurage mushrooms

After ramen we walked around Canal city which is basically a big shopping mall. We went into one food souvenir type shop and found some interesting products as seen below. Haha...

Bust pudding

It was snowing most of Friday in Fukuoka so we spent most of our time in Canal city before heading over to an island part of Fukuoka called Nokonoshima Island. Every hour in canal city there is a water show. A different tune is played each hour and the water show is choreographed differently for each song. It is pretty cool to watch! Didn't end up taking any pictures of it though.

Half snowy tree

Cool half grassy building (part of canal city)

Stay tuned for the next instalment of our adventure in Fukuoka.

6 months.. in Japan

We've been here for 6 months now!! =) It doesn't feel like we've been here for that amount of time though..

The snow from Sunday didn't disappear until about 3-4pm on Monday. I think someone made a biggish snowman. There were two big whitish looking balls out the front of the building next to us. I originally thought they were some kind of concrete balls that had been dug out from somewhere. One of them is still melting!

Today I went with Sam to his school for a little bit as year 6 students from nearby elementary schools were checking out the different school clubs. We got to eat mochi afterwards!! They were making them at the back of the school. There were three different types: daikon and soy, soy and sugar and a kinako (roasted soy bean flour) one. You could get as many of the different types as you wanted, which was awesome! Would have brought a container with me if I knew. The kinako one was my favourite. I've never tried a daikon one. It was interesting - it tasted mostly like cooked daikon and soy with mochi texture. =P Got to meet a lot of students and teachers as well. They were all really friendly and quite surprised? to see me.

Teachers and parents pounding the mochi

One of my kinako mochi. Looks like a piece of schnitzel.. Hehe..