Delicious Korean BBQ

Yum yum yum. You order a plate of meat and a plate of veg, then cook it yourself over a bbq set in the table.

And now I just wait for James to arrive!

Egg Dog

Oh! Nikko

This week we had a week off from classes due to some nicely timed national holidays and the Waseda Festival. I mostly enjoyed this time by being lazy, but on Friday Jessi and me went to Nikko to check out the autumn leaves. I'd often heard Nikko was a beautiful place that wasn't too far from Tokyo and that it's especially nice during Autumn. So, we decided to go.

I know daylight saving has just ended in the UK so you're all having darker evenings and whatnot. But in Japan there is no daylight saving and the sun sets really early. When I first arrived here in September I was surprised by it being dark by 6.30pm but now it gets dark as early as 5.00. With this in mind, we decided an early start made sense to make the most of the daylight. Alarms were set for 5:45am (ouch), we set off at 6.30 and we made it to Nikko for about 10 (walk to Takadanobaba, Yamanote to Ueno, change to Ginza line to Asakusa, then the 08.10 limited rapid to Nikko on the Tobu line which took about 2.5 hours. Phew).

The weather was absolutely gorgeous when we left Tokyo, clear skies, bright sunshine and just a bit of mist on the horizon. The Japanese woman sitting opposite pointed out to us my first glimpse of Mount Fuji seen from the opposite side of Tokyo, looming out of the mist. She said it'd been the first time she'd ever seen Fuji from this train, and it was pretty cool. I'm looking forward to getting a better look at Fuji-san later this month!

So, we finally got to Nikko, in glorious sunshine, and began getting our bearings.

The first sight we came across was the bridge. I'm not sure of its name, but it sure was a pretty bridge. You could stand and look at it for free or pay 3 or 400Y to walk across it, which we did. And so I got my first slight feeling of being ripped off. You literally walk across and then back again across this bridge, you can't exit the other side and there's a rather busy road running along side it.

On a positive note, when we were promenading across the bridge a family with their little girl in a kimono turned up:

She was so so cute! We asked her mother if she'd mind if we took a photo of her daughter, which she didn't and she proceeded to take a photo of the gaijin taking photos of their daughter. Weird. But nevertheless, the girl was super kawaii.

Once we left the bridge we walked up some stone steps towards where the shrines were. This is the first shrine we came across:

Lovely. It was a building sight, they were doing a massive renovation of it. We had bought a special train ticket which gave us entry to about 5 or 6 shrines in Nikko, this being one of them. We didn't particularly fancy walking around a building sight so we paid to enter a Japanese garden which was located opposite this.

The garden was utterly stunning and made the Nikko trip for me. I'd wanted to visit a Japanese style garden since arriving in Japan, and seeing this one with the autumnal leaves was gorgeous. The only problem (to which we were contributing) was how crowded with tourists it was. And this was early on in the day, before they'd all arrived. Anyway, on to the pretty leafy photos. If you don't like leaves, you might as well stop reading.

When we first arrived the glorious sunshine which we'd enjoyed in Tokyo and on the train seemed to falter and it went a bit dull. Me and Jessi would get very excited when the sun came out from behind the clouds as it made the photos look so much nicer :)

 Leafy.

Me with leaves.

Some more leaves, this time with water.

Then we left the garden and went to look for more shrines.

Jessi and I both had different aims for things to see in Nikko - I wanted to see a carving of the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil monkeys which get a mention in just about every guidebook, whereas Jessi wanted to see a carving of a sleeping cat.

I found my monkeys, complete with a huge crowd of people in front of it taking photos of it. It was sort of unimpressive, I'm not really sure of its significance. But it got ticked off the list nontheless.

Me in front of a pretty building, trying to use my head to hide an ugly 'no smoking' sign. Yeah, I get that smoking by these wooden world heritage buildings is a silly idea, but I think spoiling the view of them with 'no smoking' signs is destructive in its own way.

A very heavily decorated shrine.

It was up these steps that you get to a courtyard that leads to the carving of a sleeping cat that Jessi wanted to see. Which, of course, you have to pay another 400Y for the privilege. I was starting to feel fleeced so I didn't bother to see it, but Jessi did and she seemed happy when she got back.

Carvings of peacocks are just as good as carvings of cats if you ask me.

A coach load of biddys arriving.

The settings of the temples was stunning, surrounded by ancient cedar trees.

 It was nice to get out of the pollution of Tokyo to some fresh air.

We walked into a bit I don't think we should have (possibly staff accomodation). But the building was pretty!

 
We also found a guy sweeping gravel. Yep, sweeping it to make it neater. Fully worthy of a photo.

We also quickly visited the Imperial Villa but, sadly, this is the only photo I took and we didn't enter.

After an early start and a long day walking around mountaineous shrines, we started to head home. As the sun was setting, the view of the mountains surrounding Nikko was gorgeous as the autumnal leaves were bathed in golden sunsetty light. And then we went home.

Food and drink in Nikko:

I tried my first (and long overdue) cup of matcha green tea. Very tasty!

We also tried a Nikko speciality which is yuba (tofu skin) which is the circular thing in the bowl on the right. I'm not the biggest fan of tofu (it's pretty boring) and, I have to admit, I enjoyed the shrimp tempura more.

And I finally tried a fish on a stick which I'd been too scared to try at the Kawagoe Matsuri. We saw a guy cooking them on the street in Nikko so I thought I'd give it a go. It came whole, with head, tail, and guts. I guess I was lucky they'd taken off the scales! It was tasty but pretty tricky to eat.

And that's it for my adventures in Nikko. I did enjoy the day and I'm glad I went, but the sheer amount of tourists everywhere made it all feel less special and having to pay for entrance twice for some things made me feel a bit ripped off. Hey ho, I never thought Japan would be cheap.

Kabuki-cho

Nikko

Sunset over Shinjuku

Click on the pictures for bigger.

Catch up

It's Tuesday and my week is over. Phew. It's a national holiday tomorrow and this weekend we have our university's festival which means lessons on Friday and Saturday are cancelled and I have no more lessons until next Tuesday. YESSSSS! I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my freedom. I have friends heading off all over Japan (mostly to places I am already booked to visit later this month or in December - can't complain) but I'm not too sure what to do with myself. So far I think I'll spend a couple of days chilling in Tokyo catching up on unlearnt vocab, heading to some art galleries and mooching. On Friday, if the weather is nice, me and Jessi will head to Nikko to see the autumn leaves and then on Saturday I might as well enjoy the reason for my freedom from lessons and see what this festival is all about.

So, until then I'd better put photos I've been taking over the last few weeks that I never got around to sorting out.

About two weeks ago we went to Asakusa to a temple called Senso-ji. Very big, very impressive, very templey.

This one of the arcades of shops leading up to the temples. I'd heard it was a good place to buy souvenirs and, though it was, it probably the most touristy feeling place I've been to so far (2nd only to Tokyo Tower which basically had a shopping centre of souvenir shops at it's base).

 Senso-ji is known for it's large lanterns. And large they were.

Having a little play with dof.

The temple had some beautiful grounds which this photo does nothing to sum up accurately. My camera wasn't enjoying the low light levels and I couldn't be bothered to fiddling with it to look better (it need a tripod and a wider angle lens really).

Another temple crossed off the list.

The Sunday just gone a group of us got hold of tickets for the "infamous" Waseda vs. Keio Baseball game. I was rather excited about it, I never go to sports matches (in fact I think an ice hockey match in Quebec might be the only professional sporting even I've ever been to...). But this baseball match wasn't professional, it was the universities' grudge match. According to Wikipedia a lot of players from these teams go on to become pro baseball players, so it was skilled stuff.

Whether the match was good or not, I honestly couldn't tell you. I don't know the rules of baseball to begin with, and secondly I couldn't watch it half the time because whenever we were batting our section of the crowd had to stand and do cheers and chants. They had us chanting things like gambatte (good luck) to the bowler (pitcher?) and singing fighto fighto fighto. It was good fun and a bit exhausting but I didn't come away any the wiser about baseball. Which I've been told is a good thing because according to everyone I talk to about it, I'm just told it's a boring game. We lost anyway. Hey ho.

On the other hand, the cheerleaders were fantastic. The guy in the middle there lead the cheers the whole way through the match and he never lost any energy or enthusiasm. I'll upload a video I got of the cheerleaders doing their thing, but I'm sure the photos give you a good idea.

And that was the baseball. It was fun to have gone and experience is but I don't think I'd rush back. I think I'd rather play a game of rounders.

I thought some people might be interested in the food I've been eating in Japan. My diet has been pretty terrible since arriving - nightly trips to the 100Y shop for my sugar fix of baumkuchen or chocolate are a habit I need to shake. I also have found myself pretty intimidated by the supermarket, not know what anything is or what to do with it. I'm now making a positive effort to stay off the bentos and start making my own food. More on that later.

So, the food at the baseball game was pretty funny and entirely meat based. The most popular option seemed to be KFC, but other options included...

WILD SUPER TURKEY REG - one of my favourite Engrish signs so far. If turkey reg isn't your cup of tea, instead you can have a plate of sausages:

Myra with my sausages. They were good sausages, too. As I say, this place was not vegetarian friendly, there seriously weren't any other options. And I won't say what direction the conversation turned when I went back to my seat with a plate of assorted sausages, I'm sure you can guess.

Moving on, here's a little stall we found when wandering around Shinjuku a couple of weeks ago, just beyond the dodgy part and into the Korean part of town.

He said they were called Korean pancakes. He had a big tub of doughy batter beside him which he threw on the hotplate. The guy asked us what fillings we wanted but none of us could understand him so he put one of the 3 fillings he had in each, which turned out to be cheese, red bean paste and cinnamon. When we realised red bean paste had been put in one we decided to draw lots on who got which. I ended up with cinnamon so I was pretty happy! It was quite a tasty little snack, but I wouldn't recommend the cheese or red bean paste.

And, just as common as finding red bean paste in your pancakes is finding matcha green tea in just about anything else. Matcha chocolate, ice cream, and caffe lattes are all popular here.

Another strange meal I ate yesterday is this thing:


No, I don't know what it is either. We saw a stand with a queue in front of it, so we joined it and this is what we got. It appeared to be some sort of a batter mixture with bits and bobs in it which is cooked in a half-spherical mould on a hotplate. They turn it as it's cooking so it comes out spherical and then you chose what sauce you want on top. I went for teriyaki and, inevitably, it came with mayonnaise and chopped up kelp. It was really difficult to eat with chopsticks (even worse when everyone stares at you to see how good you are with chopsticks). Inside the batter I found sweetcorn, a bit of a frankfurter sausage, some tentacles, something white and stringy and a small boiled egg (quail's?). It was quite a food adventure.

Now to some nice food...

 How good does that look?! After a hard day's university and a bit of shopping in Shinjuku, Jessi and me stopped by a department store to pick up a bento for our evening's meal. And wow, the food court would rival Harrod's, it was huge! In the end I went for this fish bento (can it be called sushi when they're not in those bitesize pieces?) and, in the background you can see a basil and potato salad. Both were absolutely gorgeous and rather healthy :)

So, as I said, I have to stop eating pre-made meals (even though they're far and away better than your curry in a box from Sainsbury's). So here's what I made today:

Udon with chicken, leek, and mushrooms. Okay, it doesn't look fantastic. And it tasted okay. But I was just chuffed with myself to have been able to work out what any of the ingredients were in the supermarket (no oxo cubes here). And, look ma - mushrooms! I've only started to eat and enjoy them this week and now I'm cooking with them.

Phew. That's it for now. HOPEFULLY next post will be full of gorgeous autumnal foliage from Nikko - hope I don't miss it at it's best!