Saturday

On Saturday I took Cindy (another Cindy, not the one you all know) and Judy up to the Wat Thai temple in North Hollywood :

Every weekend at the Temple they have a Thai food fair. When you get there you need to buy these colorful tokens that you can use to buy food at the shops:

Here is just one of the food stands. This particular place sells Mango and Sticky rice dessert. To the left you can see a whole bunch of umbrellas and tables where you can sit to eat. All along the corners of the courtyard are food stands selling authentic "street" thai food like: Satay, Noodle Soups, Chicken rice dishes, dumplings, coconut drinks, sausages, etc!

Here is a picture of the Satay. They have Beef, Chicken, and Pork hot off the Barbecue! My favorite one was the pork satay!


For my main meal I had a bamboo salad dish with a nissen sausage:

Another booth had fried bananas for sale. I love fried bananas!!!

Now comes one of the best desserts I have ever had! It is champagne mango over a bed of mildly sweet sticky rice drizzled with a little coconut milk. It may sound strange to eat mangos with rice, but you HAVE to try it! It is absolutely fantastic!

After the Thai temple we wandered around Los Angeles trying to figure out what to do. The girls mentioned that they had also wanted to try a chinese foot massage but were scared to go without someone to watch over them (some of the places are kind of seedy). So they decided that I would escort them to a foot massage place.

I have to say they are a great deal! The price is $15.00 for one hour. You get a back massage, a foot soak in tea, and of course the foot massage itself. Meanwhile you get to sit in huge, plush chairs and watch plasma TVs while getting your massage! The price was just really fantastic considering how expensive a massage usually is! I went it not expecting much (c'mon $15.00??) but I was really impressed with what we got!

Apparently it is getting really popular now because there were no less than 5 foot massage places in the same block/plaza that we were at! And all of them were bustling with customers. I heard that some of them might offer "Special" services but apparently not the one we went to :)

Off to Seattle! And a food-filled weekend

I'm going to seattle for most of next week so I will not be able to edit Japan photos for posting! I did all sorts of fun stuff this weekend, so I'll write it up into 3 chunks and post them as I find internet access.

Friday night I went to Sushi Wasabi with Vanessa. Cindy had written about our last adventure there when we went as a group. As a reminder -- the special deal with sushi wasabi is:

1) You don't get to order.
The Chef decides what you eat, and he serves you whatever is freshly available that day. This means you better be able to eat anything or otherwise insult the chef! Jordan once you eat real sushi we'll have to take you here!!!

2) You get REAL Wasabi.
Since real Wasabi Root is so expensive, most sushi places give Wasabi that is actually green-colored horseradish. Others give you Wasabi that was reconstituted from a Dry powder. Here they actually get the REAL root and grind it fresh daily. It makes a huge difference!

The food was so good we ended up staying until closing time. I have to say that this is still the best sushi that I have had. This includes the sushi that I had in Japan! While I did get to try some new / interesting fish in Japan, the flavor and presentation is still better here!

Next post will be about the Wat Thai temple in North Hollywood!

First Pension

A lot of people have the perception that Japan is an expensive place to stay. This is actually false, and you can get around Japan on a budget if you really know where to look! One of the greatest deals in Japan are the pensions. You can consider them like a bed and breakfast but you get so much more!

The price to stay one night is in this particular pension was $70. This includes the room, Dinner, Breakfast, and usually Taxi service to and from the train station!

Below is a photo of the first pension we stayed at.


Dinner is a multi-course french-japanese style meal. The first course that we had was salmon sashimi and prosciutto ham salad:

The next course was soup! It doesn't look like much but it was extremely tasty actually. I was surprised!

The next course is a pan-fried fish dish! As with all the seafood I had in Japan it was fresh and delicious!

The main course is unlimited rice, and steak from the local cattle:

Polish it off with a Jelly dessert in a cream sauce with mint and berries:

In the morning we get treated to breakfast! This is more american style with Scrambled Eggs, Ham, Hash Browns, Salad, Fruit, Orange Juice, Tea, and Bread!

So you get all of that, for the low price of $70.00 per night! Try to find that anywhere in the U.S. I have to say that the dinner alone is probably worth at least half the cost!

The Train! The Train!

This was my first long train ride in Japan. We were on our way to Izu. We picked up some Bento lunch boxes for the ride. Below is the one that I got. Yes, those are disposable lunch boxes. Aren't they kind of intricate??


Here's what was inside. Yes it's kind of jumbled up because I started digging through it before I realized i should have taken a picture first :) Oh well. You have fish cakes, fish, bamboo, mochi, plums, rice balls, some meat, carrots, and condiments! It was quite good!


Below is a picture of my friend's lunch box. They sure spend a lot of attention to their presentation! Everything from the Bentos to Snack foods come wrapped in fancy packages.

This is Kevin's lunch. He went for a burger and sandwhich! Boooo!!!!

This is the view out the window of the train! There's so much water in Japan that many of the train rides had scenic vistas of the ocean, lakes, streams, or rivers!



Below is a picture of a small bay that we passed by on our way to Izu!
The next trip post will be about Izu! Home of the Wasabi!

The Ramen Nazi

I never really liked eating Ramen in the U.S. I guess i've had too many bowls of "Instant Ramen" or "Cup of Noodles" as a kid that it tainted my opinion of Ramen.

After Ueno park, we decided to have Ramen for lunch. This is a picture of the poster outside that shows what it looks like inside the place. You sit in a "cubicle" of sorts to eat your Ramen!

The atmosphere kind of reminds me of the "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld. You go in, get your food, enjoy it, and get out. No putzing around allowed!

I didnt want take many pictures inside because I wasn't quite sure if I should be doing it or not. But it was so unique I had to grab at least a few shots!

It was really dark, and i was being surreptitious by not using the flash. I'm surprised these shots turned out. Kudos to Panasonic's image stabilization. For you photo people these pictures were taken using 1/8 sec shutter speed all hand-held!

To the right is a picture of the cubicle. You have a little water spout to the left if you're thirsty. The little bamboo thing in front slides up and they pick up your meal ticket (I'll explain this later) and slide your meal through here.

The red curtain is always there -- so you can not see who is serving you your food. Apparently you are supposed to concentrate on the food and eating, and not be distracted by anything else!

To the left is a sign which is attached to every cubicle. Check out the pictures in Red. No smoking! No Cell Phones! And definately NO TALKING! :)

They really go out of their way to make this a personal / individual kind of thing. This posed a problem for us non-japanese speaking tourists. We have 1 guy in our group that speaks fluent Japanese. Usually he orders everything and does the communication.

Because of the way the seating is done, and because there is no talking, we were not allowed to communicate with each other. The ordering was slightly complicated as well because you can choose: How thick you want the soup; How well done you want the noodles; if you want pork or not; if you want green onions or not; How spicy you want it, etc. You really can customize your meal to your taste!

This is how the line works. When a cubicle opens up a little light turns blue on this wall. When that happens the next person in line can go in and take his seat. I.e., you can't choose who you sit next to.

Everything is written and communicated in Japanese and since you can't see the person serving you it's a little hard to communicate :)

You order your food through a machine like this.
You even pay the machine, and it gives you tickets which
you give to your server.

This is a close-up of the Ramen! It was fantastic!
The soup really made it special, but the noodles were
hand made, fresh, and al-dente. If they had Ramen
like this in the states I would eat it often! :)

The First Morning

The first day I arrive, we decide to go to the Tsujiki fish market. It opens early in the morning so we woke up at 5:00am to get there on time! That was quite a feat for me for anyone that knows me!

The fish market is a gigantic warehouse. Imagine an area of a couple walmarts. Except all the merchandise is seafood! Inside there are carts, weird drum-cars (see the video), and people running around like mad to bring the daily catch in.

1. View from the center of the market

2. Doesn't he look friendly?

3. A bunch of little Fishies!

4. Tuna is Expensive!
5. Lobster! Yummy!

6. Shrimp to throw at Jordan!

7. Clams!

Here is a short walk-through video I took in the market:

After the fish market we decided to visit a sushi bar next door to have breakfast! Mmmm Jordan and Flat Coke this is what you can enjoy if you come visit us :)

We wanted to get the freshest items so we told the Sushi chef to order the items for us. We got a few items that we never had before. Here's some of the selection we had (I didnt take a picture of all of them):

1. Sweet Shrimp (Ama Ebi)

2. Another type of Shrimp

3. Sea Urchin!

4. I think it's Clam...

5. The salmon was only $1.50! Cindy would love it!

6. Baked Eel. Jordan can Handle this!

7. Don't know what it is!

8. I think it's squid tentacles!

Everything tasted great and was super fresh! I forgot to take a picture of the Salmon eggs. But for anyone that's had them before in the U.S. they are usually extremely salty. The ones here were not salty at all and they were great! It may be because they are fresh and don't need to be preserved? I'm not quite sure why.

We had quite a few items that we weren't quite sure what it was. This won't be the last time that happens either!

So... Did this post make you hungry???