Lioness in Japan

One of our tennis friends invited us to a day trip in Enoshima, where he lives last Sunday. The agenda: sight-seeing, tennis, onsen, dinner at home. It’s been a while since I’d gone anywhere new in Japan so I was really looking forward to leaving Tokyo behind for a day.

Enoshima is a small island near Kamakura and is known for its densely populated temples and statues. We thought it would be a quiet stroll but there was a bustling marathon that went on in the morning so this tiny island was flooded with people!

We paid our respects at the Enoshima Shrine, where we bowed twice, clapped twice, then bowed, and made a wish. The kangaroo was a little secretive when our Japanese friends asked him what he wished for.

We spotted these huge gorgeous Bernese Mountain dogs who were chilling out with their owner.

After strolling around for a bit, we stopped at a teishoku (means set meal in Japanese) restaurant for some Enoshima-don which was rice topped with sansai (means edible wild plants) vegetables mixed with egg and dashi. It was delicious and not too heavy for the next activity — a two-hour session of tennis.

The specialty of Enoshima is shirasu (or whitebait) so you could find this everywhere on the island.

I didn’t really know that shirasu was an Enoshima delicacy when we ordered lunch and it wasn’t really the season to eat shirasu sashimi so it came boiled, according to our friends who had the shirasu-don. I popped a few in my mouth from a vendor selling the stuff and it was…fishy. I prefer whitebait cooked in something so eating it on its own was weird.

I didn’t take pictures of what we did for the rest of the day as it wasn’t very convenient. The onsen was amazing as usual and I had a quiet 10 minutes just easing my aching muscles in the outdoor onsen area. After a hot soak, it was time for a splendid dinner of Niigata cuisine as our hosts were originally from there. We had oden, a variety of sashimi, various delicious vegetable dishes, sticky rice, strawberry-and-potato salad, and four types of mochi. We rolled back home to Tokyo, and I must say, I slept well that night.

I was so excited to find Five Star Cafe in Nakameguro! Make that two more exclamation marks!!

One of my students told me about this little nook near the station and I was in culinary heaven when I slowly savoured this bowl of delicious laksa. It actually had chor bee hoon (thick rice vermicelli) which cannot be found in other laksa versions in Tokyo. They either use mochi noodles or thin vermicelli which are not authentic.

For their dinner menu, they have chicken rice, bah kut teh, carrot cake, fish head curry, chilli crab etc on their menu and they all look very yummy from their pictures. I can’t wait to head over for dinner!

The restaurant was so cute with its tiny interior and little accents of Singaporean memorabilia. No merlions lurking around that’s for sure! They also had a message that “wan-chan” (a nickname for dogs because the sound they make in Japan is “wan-wan”, as opposed to bow-wow or woof) is welcomed in their cafe and their mascot is a pug — big aw from me as a pug-lover.

I wanted to buy a jar of kaya but they had sold out and they also sell their own version of ra-yu, or chilli oil that was probably the top food trend in the past couple of years in Japan.

I’ve actually written a review on Da Isa, a great Napoli-inspired trattoria in Nakameguro, but I can’t resist putting up pictures of a recent lunch here.

Today’s food pictures have little to do with eating for today’s post though.

I’m not sure if you have noticed but I’ve been changing things up and experimenting with the way I’m blogging in this space. After some thought, I decided to blog only about things that I’m grateful for in Japan.

In recent months, I’ve been feeling negative and I just could not get out of my head. Then I was inspired to take photos of all the things I like on a daily basis. A grateful thought a day makes the lioness a happy camper? I’m not sure but I’m willing to give it a go. I’m not a naturally positive person and perhaps this exercise in daily gratitude could help me in some way…

In any case, whether I know what I am doing, at least I am trying to pull out the little joys in my life so my mind won’t swirl around negative thoughts so much.

And today’s pictures are remnants of a lunch with friends who were awesome company on a Thursday afternoon, who know way more about my neighbourhood than me, and who love some of the same things I do. And good pizza. And a hot beverage on an icy grey day in Tokyo.

It was a friend’s birthday party and she held it on a Yakatabune cruise with all-you-can-eat monjayaki.

For those who don’t know what monjayaki is, it’s a sticky liquidy Japanese dish made on a hot plate or grill. You fry up a bunch of ingredients like cabbage, fish roe, cheese, eggplant, mochi, meat etc and douse it in a liquid that has soup stock and flour. It’s supposed to be batter but it really looks like a cloudy soup, as opposed to the pancake-like batter used for okonomiyaki.

It was a fun communal way of eating — as the sticky concoction simmers on the hot plate, you take these tiny metal spatulas and scoop a small portion directly into your mouth. I asked if it was okay for the spatula to touch your mouth and/or tongue and it seemed to be perfectly fine — this might make germophobes recoil in horror. I was fine with it and thought it all felt strange but extremely yummy and filling.

I made an Oreo cheesecake from a recipe online which is supposed to be a copycat of the Cheesecake Factory’s version. I’ve never been there (it’s in LA somewhere, I think) but something tells me my cheesecake debut is quite far from the original one.

It turned out a bit too dry for cheesecake though it did taste like cheesecake with Oreo crumbs everywhere. It didn’t taste bad but it didn’t have the richness of what cheesecakes should have. Something tells me that 30% reduced cream cheese has something to do with it and I baked it far too long as the browned surface is a little on the chewy side. I’ve been told by more than a few people that every oven is different and what comes out of yours won’t be the same as another’s even if you use the same recipe.

I made this for the kangaroo as a Valentine’s Day present and he loved it. But he loves everything I make which is really sweet.

Do you ever get an idea in your head and can’t shake it off? Well, that was me and this waffle maker thingamajig. We got some vouchers as wedding gifts and I thought of splurging on something totally unnecessary and indulgent — something we don’t really do with our own money, I suppose — and decided a waffle maker would inch me closer to my domestic goddess aspirations.

I think the last time I ate waffles was at an A&W fast food joint in Singapore where they served four pieces of waffles with a big dollop of vanilla ice-cream and strawberry syrup. I was 14 I think.

It’s funny how I’m trying to re-create a childhood memory at the age of 33.

Perhaps the title is a bit of a misnomer because I’m not really enhancing the aesthetics of my new home but I’m getting little things to make it feel more comfortable.

I got a new fluffy huge green bathmat because the floor of the bathroom is just icy; a candle lamp to burn scented candles while watching movies in the dark; a cheery red teapot to aid my fiendish tea-drinking habit.

I like red, green, and white for the house and it was the same colour scheme as our previous apartment. They sound like Christmas colours but be assured there’s a lot more red and the greens are of the lime variety but who am I kidding with that green mat above?

I love noodles but pork-based ramen give me the heebie jeebies. Sometimes I would request the chef to leave out the charsiu and would choose lighter broth like shio (or salt), and miso. Thick Hakata white pork ramen is too pungent for me…

To my delight, I stumbled upon a fish bone ramen shop in Roppongi! It’s called 麺と酒肴処 壱幹 (more pictures and reviews at Tabelog but it’s all in Japanese), but I don’t know what it is exactly in Japanese. I just know the meaning of the name which is noodles and alcohol snacks one tree trunk. It’s a choppy direct translation but you get the drift.

It’s quite a cozy and classy place that plays jazz music and the booth-style joint and yellow lighting make it feel intimate so it’s probably the kind of ramen shop women wouldn’t mind eating in.

For 980JPY, I got a bowl of fish ramen with a side of steamed cabbage and some shrimp wantan. The broth was excellent though the shrimp wantan was a little strange as it was literally just a piece of shrimp wrapped in wantan skin. It would’ve been more tasty if they added more ingredients to the filling…

If you don’t like pork ramen, you would love this version. It’s very light but extremely flavourful so you don’t feel the weight of the fat and oil from traditional ramen. In fact, I felt quite virtuous after slurping it all down. The portions are not big so it’s really suitable for weight-conscious ladies.

I cannot get enough of my oven! I think it’s because it’s cold and having baked items just feel very hearty.

This is my super healthy veggie meal with oven baked kidney bean and walnut patties on a bed of quinoa and ratatouille, and a side salad drizzled with a parika chickpea dressing. I feel virtuous looking at this meal as it was a healthy dinner I had a few weeks ago. Lately, I’ve not been so disciplined.

*Burp*

I went to a salaryman bar in Shinjuku for a friend’s birthday nijikai (second party) last weekend and we were quite a big group so it seemed that a multi-level salaryman like Yamato in West Shinjuku was the answer.

It was crammed with tables and people. I asked who usually came to these smokey 24 hour booze joints and it seemed mostly salarymen and college student haunt these places for 180JPY beer and 500JPY eats. You can find mostly grilled fish, sushi, yaki-soba etc. type dishes here. The otoshi (the obligatory appetizer that starts the meal in any izakaya) was a gruesome mix of innards stewed in shoyu. Even the Japanese at the table didn’t touch it so we gaijins just followed suit.

The drinks menu boasts all types of shouchu cocktails below 500JPY, though you’d be treading on dangerous ground if you attempted their wine — a friend who ordered a glass of red did not recommend that I did the same for myself.

The star of the drinks menu is really Hoppy, a strange hybrid of half a mug of shouchu topped with Hoppy, a type of beer-like beverage that tastes like beer but has little or no alcohol content. It tasted like diluted beer to me which was actually a good thing because I don’t fancy beer, but this may be the very reason beer lovers would hate it. My Japanese friend seemed to enjoy it immensely that night.