Spring in Kyoto with mum

My mum visited us at the start of April this year. It was nice to see her and spend some time with her. We met her in Kyoto, after Sam and I got a little lost trying to find where the limousine bus would drop her off. Our first stop after dropping off our bags at the hotel was Kiyomizudera. The sakura trees were in full blossom in Kyoto compared to in Kobe. As the blossoms don't last very long, meant that there were many many people there to see the sakura. It was my first time seeing them and they were everywhere and so pretty! It's quite a different scene visiting Kyoto in Spring and Autumn and it's hard to say which I prefer. Hmm...

Flowers of the most common type of sakura.

Elderly man painting

Next we visited a little shop called En we were told a little about the history of tea ceremony and watched a lady prepare the tea. We also got to try whisking up our own matcha. Mine didn't foam. =(

On our walk from Kiyomizudera to En we passed my Maruyama park and decided to have a walkthrough on the way back. There were many stalls set up around the place with food such as takoyaki, yakisoba, okonomiyaka, mochi and candied fruit. Below the trees were many people having hanami (flower viewing) parties. The park gets lit up at night time as well. A gigantic 40-foot weeping sakura tree, over 80 years old is another of the main attractions of this park.

The big ol' tree. It was painstakingly difficult to get a photo with no one in it..

Panda bread

Last Sunday it was Father's day here in Japan. At one of our favourite bakeries they were selling these panda breads for father's day. Their heads had a chocolate custard and their bodies plain custard. You also received a little pen/ tube of chocolate if you wanted to write a message. Overall it wasn't that great. The chocolate custard was so-so as the chocolate used in and on it wasn't very good.. It was fun though.. =P

This is how it came with the decorating chocolate.

Wasn't very good at decorating it. Tried to copy an example they had but failed.. =(

Whahaha..

They have these tasty caramels from Hokkaido here. They have many many different and interesting flavours including potato (which my in-laws tried), tomato and corn. You can even get Genghis Khan Lamb caramels. O_O !! I played it safe and tried strawberry, kinako (roasted soybean flour), melon, shirakaba no shizuku milk (not really sure what it is), Hokkaido condensed milk and Hokkaido butter. Only one I wasn't much of a fan of was the melon one as it was a bit too strong.

Plum (ume) tree viewing

Today, one of Sam's colleagues took us plum tree viewing with his two sons. Not too sure where we went, but it was past Himeji somewhere.. =P The plum trees produce a different type of plum than western plum. It is more sour plum and usually eaten in it's pickled state commonly in onigiri. The Japanese plum trees are beautiful trees with a delightful sweet fragrance. We saw four different colours - white, pink, red (although it was just really dark pink) and blue/green. I say blue/green as they call what I consider green to be blue. The traffic lights are called red, yellow and blue (green) =P. The blue/green one was slightly green a bit like greenish hydrangeas. We saw a quite a few people who would venture off the path into the trees to find a nice spot to sit and have lunch under the trees.
 

Plum blossom tea - salty like the seaweed tea in Kyoto

Close up white plum tree

Close up 'red' plum tree

Pink and red

Close up pink plum tree

This one was a pinky white

Green plum tree

Sad weeping plum tree

Sam's colleague took us out for some eel lunch. It was really good! They also gave us 3 whole charcoal grilled 'sama' fish. It was tasty fish, but it was a little difficult to eat due to all the little bones as we hadn't eaten one before. We watched a variety show the other week, where they showed and ranked housewives skills and manners in eating this fish. I was trying to remember how they showed the proper way to eat it whilst slowly destroying my fish. =(

Fukuoka day 3

Aiyo!! This was sitting as a draft for soo long.. Oops.. This is the third day/ installment of our time in Fukuoka.

Tim (Sam's family friend) and his son Yogi took us around Fukuoka on Sunday before taking us to the airport. Our first stop was Kushida shrine. It was a real blessing having Tim with us as he was able to explain what certain things in the shrine were/for. Hakata shrine hosts Hakata Gion Yamakasa a festival celebrated in early July. It includes a float race, where men carry riduculously heavy wooden floats and race.

Sam and Yogi in one of the entrances/mouths to the shrine

Example of a float

Back view of the float

A wedding started whilst we were there

Example of a traditional Hakata wall

We went to Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. We saw two exhibitions - Voyage and awakening: Chinese contemporary art 1979-2009, and Freedom in Blossom! :Gangaw Village and Experimental Art in 1980s Burma. The Second exhibition I found extremely interesting as the artwork shows some of the hardships that the artists had experienced/ witnessed.

Canal city has one floor dedicated to ramen and is named ...  RAMEN STADIUM. There are many ramen shops on this floor and you purchase your meal tickets for the particular shop you want to eat at before getting in the LONG queues. We got there fairly early but it was already packed so we decided to go for good ol' Ichiran downstairs. This particular branch of Ichiran, located in Canal city gives you the option of having an original blend of vinegar in your ramen. Sam and I tried the ramen with vinegar this time. It enhanced the flavour of the broth, however I wish you could specify how much vinegar you could get as it was a little too vinegary for me.

Ramen Stadium entrance

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.