Japan Food Photos - Part 2

This was in what I call "Yakitori alley" but is properly called Omoide Street, in Shinjuku. A great couple of alleyways full of dirty yakitori bars. This was the soup thing that they have big vats of to eat with your yakitori. I can't remember what it was called but it was really really good! Had that tofu stuff (need to know the name of this as well!), pigs stomach and lots of spring onion. Very tasty. You can also see my edamame remains, lol.

And here's some of the yakitori. I didn't like the way this place wanted us to order a set. I like choosing one piece at a time, randomly. I like the weird parts of the animals you can eat. Also the leek is very good.

After the yakitori, I went around the corner for some sashimi. On the sign outside they said they had horse and whale. I wanted the horse (because previously on this trip I had an awesome dish of raw horse, raw egg and raw onions, sooo good). However, I ordered the whale. It was good.
I wouldn't recommend the Hoppy drink though. Its beer (light or dark varieties) mixed with ice, and I think shochu or some other spirit as it was very very alcoholic and not very tasty at all.

Omurice in @home maid cafe. I asked the maid to draw me an usagi (rabbit). Do you think she succeeded?

On the Shinkansen! You have to eat on the shinkansen, and you can either have a bento or sandwiches. I love bento boxes, but I also really love the Shinkansen sandwiches. I love the variety you get and how you have these little white rectangles with no crusts. Btw, this type of Asahi beer is really good (its one of the cheap ones which is ~150 Yen because its brewed with low malt content to avoid paying beer tax, but doesn't taste like the normal Happoshu, more like normal beer).

Some kind of sashimi. In Kyoto near my hotel. Probably beef. Those little parcels were tasty though.

The beef sashimi again.

The tofu in broth was really really good. Liked the fresh herb.

A classic bowl of ramen.
I love this classic look - a (runny) egg cut in half, two bits of pork, some nori sticking out of the side.
So good.

Yuba sashimi in Kyoto - in that famous long street filled with restaurants. I actually wouldn't recommend eating in that street - expensive and not that great. Nice crockery though.

I also had some yakitori there. Some kind of vegetable.

And some leek and mushroom yakitori.
Oh, and I have some shochu on the side. Love shochu. It is bad for your head the next day though. And your manners that evening!

Some sashimi I had in the middle of the night in a sushi place in Kyoto after drinking far too much shochu. Actually, I think the problem is that I had this spirit which was stronger than shochu which the korean barmaid recommended to me. Anyway, I had a bunch of sushi at this place as well as this order of sashimi. As a result of the shochu, I semi-insulted the sushi chef by saying his sushi was good but not as good as the stand-up sushi places I love in Shinjuku. He told me "you don't know good sushi".

A nice set lunch in the restaurant area of Kyoto station. Lots of variety. Shame my head hurt from all that shochu the night before...

Aha, some yakiniku in Kyoto. Yakiniku is when you cook beef yourself over that grill on your table. The steak bits were really really really good. The stomach bits not so great. I also had some cucumber kimchi which was nice. I love both cucumbers and kimchi so it was good to have them combined.

Here's me grilling. The waitress made me put on some stupid paper bib whilst I grilled. However, it was tasty beef. Yakiniku is a great experience. Nice sauces too.

This was what I ate when I visited the K-ON! School in Toyosato.
I didn't eat in the cafe because I couldn't read the menu, and the woman at the bento box stand was so nice and friendly I wanted to buy something from her.
I ate my bento in the auditorium where Hokago Tea-Time perform at the school festivals. I'm not quite sure what that meat was - the lady kept saying ton-chan, ton-chan meat, so maybe its turtle? It did taste different.

Oh yeah, I also picked up a Ton-chan pan at the K-ON! School cafe. So cute! And only 200 Yen!

Waiting for the shinkansen, so time for more sandwiches!

I visited Osaka for one evening. So, what do you eat in Osaka?
Takoyaki!

What else do you eat in Osaka?
Okonomiyaki!

I'd only previously had Hiroshima okonomiyaki. And it turns out Osaka okonomiyaki is quite different. It doesn't contain noodles for a start. It was much tastier.

Unagi-don on the 8th floor of Yodobashi camera in Akiba.
A lot of good restaurants are always found in department stores. Lunchtime deals are much cheaper than dinner sets, even for the same food.

For example, this gyu (beef) yakiniku set I had the following day in Yodobashi Akiba cost me 1500 Yen for lunch. It would cost 4 times that price at dinner time!

It was good beef. I got the 150g set.

I only let the beef barely touch the grill. its nice to have it rare.
Not the best beef I've had in Japan, but still, pretty good. You need to go a town specialising in wa-gyu for great beef, Kobe-gyu is NOT the only kind, and NOT the best kind.

My final meal in Japan. At the airport, some classic ramen and Asahi, watching the planes.

What's nice about Narita airport is that they have little combini where you can buy onigiri, canned beer, one-cup sakes etc. Much cheaper than the bar. I bought some one-cup sakes to drink on the plane. Very nice. Then I was back in England...