CoCo Curry – Where to, Gumshoe?

Sapporo (Day 62): Otaru

May 1, 2016

It was our last full day in Sapporo and in Japan. We decided to take the train out of Sapporo and go to a city called Otaru. Otaru is located on the water on the north shore of Hokkaido. It’s a small quaint town with a lot of neat shops and museums. The streets downtown used to be the “Wall Street of the North”.

The train ride from Sapporo Station is about 30 minutes and costs 640 JPY each way. Too bad we didn’t have our JR passes any more. The train to Otaru is the last stop on the same line that takes you to the Chitose Airport (Sapporo Station is in the middle of the two). The train ride to Otaru was very scenic. About half way to Otaru from Sapporo, the train runs right along the coast and you can see views of the snow capped mountains on the other side of the train. The sun was shining and the ocean was a deep blue. It was beautiful.

We arrived at Otaru Station and headed straight for the fish market. Sankaku Fish Market is located directly to the left of the station (Tim: when exiting). Hokkaido is known for their seafood, particularly their scallops, crab (king, snow, hairy), salmon roe, and uni (sea urchin). The market is a small strip of a few vendors as well as restaurants (some a lot busier than others). The restaurants mostly served seafood rice bowls of all sorts, sashimi, and grilled seafood. We put our name down at one that looked most appealing to us and waited about 10 minutes before getting called in.

The restaurant was called Takeda, and after looking at their promotional brochures, it looked like the Takeda group has multiple seafood shops within the fish market. We ordered a plate of fatty salmon sashimi (600 JPY for 8 pieces) to share and I ordered a salmon and scallop don (it was a special order because I’m not a huge fan of uni or ikura/fish roe) and Tim ordered salmon with fish roe (both for 1,200 JPY = $14.30 CAD). Each don was served with a bowl of miso soup. The fish was laid out so nicely and everything was fresh and tasty. The scallops were my favourite as they were plump and sweet. Hokkaido uni is very popular and many people were ordering plates of it. The guy beside us ordered the chef special chirashi (deluxe assorted, for 3,000 JPY = $35 CAD). It looked really pretty. I was tempted (but I resisted) to ask him if I could take a picture of it before he ate.

After lunch, we walked into town and went to the Otaru Canal, which is one of their major attractions. The sightseeing part of Otaru is all within walking distance from the train station, which makes it really easy to come for a day trip from Sapporo. While walking around Otaru and seeing their old buildings, the architecture and style of the buildings were all very western.

There were a couple of museums that we wanted to check out: the Finance Museum at the former Bank of Japan building, and the Music Box Museum. All the museums in town (Tim: that we went to) are free to go in, which is great.

The Bank of Japan building, which is located on the former “Wall Street of the north”, is now Otaru’s Finance Museum. They show the history of Japan’s currency and how it has evolved to what it is today. I thought the best part of this museum was going into the vault and being able to pick up a stack of 100 million Yen (I’ve never held so much money in my life and probably never will). All of the signage is in Japanese with no other translation, but when you get into the museum they give you an English pamphlet with information of what you’ll see when you go in. On our way out we watched a (Tim: English dubbed) video about how the Bank of Japan works and the role that the central bank plays. While watching it, I felt like I was in school learning about basic economics and inflation.

We walked down one of the main streets in Otaru that was filled with shops that sold mostly Otaru sweet and snacks. The most popular store in Otaru is LeTAO bakery. They have multiple locations in Otaru (you’ll also see their merchandise at stores in Sapporo and probably around Japan) and are famous for their dairy based merchandise – cheesecake, cheese crackers, cheese and chocolate cookies, chocolate, and ice cream. Walking down this street and going into the multiple LeTAO locations, Tim and I tried everything they sold. They give samples of everything (and big ones at that). They have a sale associate standing outside their stores with either a tray of chocolates or a whole cheesecake to scoop samples for you. Their merchandise was very good. I really enjoyed their cheesecakes and chocolate. If they have LeTAO merchandise at Haneda, I’ll probably buy some to bring back home in the summer.

After our little food tour, we ended up at the famous steam clock in Otaru. It reminded us of Gastown and as we got closer to it, we saw plaques all around the steam clock’s base that said “Gastown, Vancouver, BC, Canada”. Being away from home for 2 months, I was really excited to see something from home in any shape or form. It turns out that the steam clock maker from Vancouver also made this one in Otaru, the cast of the Gastown clock was used in this one. The steam clock is located right in front of a music box store and museum. When you go in, the whole ground floor is full of tiny music boxes and as you go up to different levels the music boxes get more expensive and fancy.

We walked through town some more and eventually made our way back to the train station. Otaru is a very small, charming, and beautiful city with a lot of character. I’m glad we spent our last day here as it was different from other cities in Japan that we had visited. We had planned to have dinner in Otaru but we didn’t see anything that caught our eye. Most of the restaurants served seafood dons, similar to what we had for lunch so we decided to head back to Sapporo for our last dinner in Japan.

When we got back to Sapporo, we were actually both still full from the LeTAO samples and the ice cream we had. We decided to do a bit of last last minute shopping at the ESTA mall beside Sapporo Station. A lot of stores were having sales because of Golden Week. Muji had signs all over showing discounts, but since I couldn’t read the signs and only saw the percentage off, I didn’t know what the conditions of the sales were. What I thought was discounted was still regular price despite all the signs saying 20% and I wasn’t able to communicate with the sales associate showing her the sign. Oh well, it wasn’t meant to be. Sorry Nate, no bear T-shirt for you.

For our last dinner in Sapporo, we ended up having CoCo Curry (Tim’s pick). It was between that or yakitori (my pick). But since we had yakitori the night before and the smoking was a bit annoying, we went to CoCo. This is truly Tim’s comfort food restaurant. I like Japanese curry too but not as much as Tim does. But since he’s always so happy when he eats it, I compromised.

We stopped by Lawsons (convenience store) on the way back to the hotel. This seemed like a very regular occurrence for us before going back to any hotel/apartment we were staying in while in Japan. We would usually get a beverage of some sort (water or cool Japanese drinks we haven’t seen before), a snack for later (usually ice cream or a Japanese pudding) or breakfast for the next morning (either yogurt or an egg salad sandwich). I’ll definitely miss Lawsons, Family Mart, Sunkus, etc.

Packing up each time we move around is always a tasks in itself. Given the small quarters of our room, it was a little difficult. I had everything from my bag sprawled out on the bed. I can’t wait to go back to Taipei and unload some things. My bag has gained 10kg since leaving Vancouver (yikes!).

It’s crazy how fast April has flown by. I’ve really enjoyed Japan, which doesn’t really surprise me. I love Japanese food, snacks and products so I knew I would like it here. I’ll really miss how pleasant and nice everyone is, how clean the washrooms are (they all have heated seats!), and how good (reasonably priced) the food is. I know we’ll be back in the future to explore more, or even to just go back to Tokyo. We spent 26 days in Japan, but we could have easily spent our full 4.5 months here and not been bored. Everyone says how expensive Japan is to visit, but in actuality Japan can be as expensive as you want it to be (Tim: or as cheap as you want it to be… which could probably be said of most places). If you want to eat “the best” of everything, then obviously Japan is super pricey, but if you eat modestly like how probably 80% of the population eats, it’s very reasonable and cheaper than back home for something similar.

We’ll be heading back to Taipei for a few days before going to Australia. I’m most looking forward to seeing family and friends while there. I am not really looking forward to how we’ll be eating. Australia is notoriously expensive, so I think Tim and I won’t be eating as bountifully as we have been in Asia. Maybe we’ll start to actually lose weight.

Steps today: 18,000

Tokyo (Day 54): Yoyogi, Harajuku, Shibuya

April 23, 2016

Today was our last full day in Tokyo. I can see how you can easily spend more than week in Tokyo really exploring the city. Even after a week I feel like we only scraped the surface, barely.

We planned on going to Yoyogi Park, Harajuku, and Shibuya today. The weather was a lot better than yesterday night so we decided to walk instead of taking the train. When we have the time (and I’m not carrying my 32 pound backpack), I prefer to walk to destinations rather than taking the subway (especially if we have to walk longer than 5 minutes to go to a station). In Tokyo, the train stations are very busy and there are usually multiple lines, so more often than not you have to travel deep underground to get to your train.

We left the apartment around noon and decided to go to a Japanese Italian restaurant chain called, Saizeriya. I know, this isn’t what most people eat when they come to Tokyo (Tim: their loss) but we had seen it in each city in Japan we’ve visited and they were always full of diners. There is a location down the street from our apartment so we decided to give it a shot. During weekdays, they have a good lunch special for 500 JPY, which includes salad, soup, an entrée and a drink (refillable fountain drinks (Tim: A rarity in Japan!)). Since this was a Saturday, we weren’t able to get that lunch special but after looking at the menu, everything was very cheap so we understood why it’s always busy.

I think eating at Saizeriya is equivalent to eating at the Olive Garden but cheaper. We ordered a side salad, a spaghetti carbonara and a baked dish called a “Doria”. The baked Doria dish had a “No.1” sign beside it so we decided to try it. When in Rome right? Except, I didn’t notice any Dorias while in Rome.

The salad was good (I really appreciate fresh vegetables and fruits while traveling), carbonara was good (though you could tell it is suited for Japanese tastes), but the star for us was the Doria. We ordered it with focaccia bread because we thought it was just a baked dish of tomato sauce and cheese, but when I dug my spoon into it, I found out there was rice. It reminded of Hong Kong style café baked rice dishes with tomato sauce. It was piping hot and very tasty. The focaccia bread was also very hot and you can tell they bake them fresh throughout the day.

I was pretty impressed by Saizeriya and I’m glad we gave it a shot. We were definitely the only tourists in the place. I know people don’t like eating in chain restaurants while they’re traveling (Tim: again, their loss), but more often than not, chain restaurants are where a lot of locals eat on a daily basis so if you want to experience a city like a local, sometimes it’s good to eat at chains.

Yoyogi Park was only about a 15-20 minute walk from our apartment and since Tokyo is very dense, there were things to see along the way. We waited to go to Yoyogi Park on a weekend because we wanted to see more locals out and about at the park. There are usually a lot of people dressed up in unique outfits and an abundance of street performers on Sundays. Unfortunately, Saturday wasn’t the same as Sunday with regards to the eccentric outfits, but there were still numerous street performers. We would have gone on a Sunday, but since we didn’t have a full Sunday in Tokyo, this was our only option.

Yoyogi Park is like Tokyo’s “Central Park” in that it’s a huge park in the middle of a large and dense city. We entered the park at the Meiji Shrine gates. That opened up to a beautiful tree lined path that lead to the Meiji Shrine. It was starting to get pretty warm out so being shaded by the trees was perfect.

When we got to the Meiji Temple area, there were multiple weddings going on. I always feel awkward for the couple and their family when hundreds of strangers are taking pictures of them and watching them during such a personal event. But at the same time, they are fully aware this will happen as the temple is a public place and isn’t booked out for private events. There was a family taking group wedding portraits in the forested area of the Meiji grounds and everyone was taking pictures of them. I tried to as well but by the time I was able to get a spot to take a picture they were starting to get up and leave.

After walking through Meiji-Jingu, we headed towards the main park area of Yoyogi where Tim was hoping for me to see people decked out in their unique outfits. But to our slight disappointment, there was no one dressed up. Instead, the park was filled with families having picnics. I suppose Saturday is family day and Sunday is cosplay/entertainment day at Yoyogi. Throughout Japan we’ve noticed that any opportunity Japanese people get, they picnic. I guess a lot of it may have to do with the fact that many of them live in apartments and even if they do have a house, there aren’t many backyards to play in. We saw different groups of people dancing, playing badminton, playing soccer, and doing yoga (yogis in Yoyogi!)

We exited the park towards Harajuku. Harajuku is an area that’s popular among young people making it a more fashion forward/trendy area of Tokyo. You may also be familiar with it as Gwen Stefani had a song and album dedicated to “Harajuku Girls” in the early 2000s (Tim: which probably wouldn’t really feel very politically correct if done today). Because of Gwen Stefani, I first learned about Harajuku. But unlike her Harajuku Girls music video, we did not see anyone dressed up like a typical Harajuku Girl. The only ones that we saw dressed up were clearly tourists, which was a bit disappointing.

I think I had Harajuku hyped up in my head but instead, it was the most crowded area of tourists we went to in the city. The upside of Harajuku was seeing some pretty good live performances near the train station, before you enter Takeshita Street. The shopping in Harajuku reminded me a bit of Myeongdong-esque shopping with a lot of cute accessory stores, socks and they even had an Etude House (Korean cosmetic shop). The main different though was that these trendy/cheap accessories and clothes were a lot more expensive than the prices in Seoul. For example, I saw a pair of earrings I had bought in Seoul for 3 times the price, and it wasn’t like the quality was any different.

The Harajuku area was also very busy because there was a large group of people (many women) gathered outside Yoyogi National Stadium (which was built for the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 1964) for a concert. At first we weren’t sure what the large crowds were for, we just saw a huge billboard that said “Sexy Zone”. Later we put together that this was a boy (Tim: emphasis on “boy”) band from seeing thousands of girls (Tim: and women) with band memorabilia and tote bags with tour dates.

Once we got through the crowds, we were on our way towards Shibuya. But before we got there, we stumbled upon Tokyo’s Earth Day celebrations. We stopped in and listened to a live band play and browse around at all the organic food and observe all the Japanese hippies. It was interesting that we stopped by an Earth Day fair where their initiative is sustainability and zero waste on the way to one of the main consumerism centres of Tokyo.

Shibuya was crowded as always. We took our time and perused Muji, Disney, Shibuya 109, and some department stores. Shibuya 109 is a multi-level mall that has independent boutique stores on each floor (each floor has about 6-8 different shops). These stores are very popular among young women in Tokyo for being on the leading edge of most recent trends (Tim: or you might say they’re trendsetters). I walked around each floor of Shibuya 109 and saw some nice clothes, but a lot of it was not my style. Perhaps I’m not very trendy and maybe in a few years these trends will blow up in North America, but for now the styles are very Japanese.

I found that stores were either very cutesy – lots of floral and pastels with lots of ruffles, very street – think stereotypical Brooklyn (not the hipster part), very California – wannabe Hollister look, or very dark – lots of black and grey. I was looking for some nice/cute summer dresses but wasn’t able to find anything I liked. There were some items that I thought were long maxi dresses that I liked but then when I looked closer they were wide legged jump suits. I’ve also noticed that Japanese girls like to wear very very wide legged pants – like gaucho pants that were in 15 years ago in North America except in every form possible (eg: like the jump suits).

Another thing I noticed while browsing around Shibuya 109 was that the girls working in the stores were all very tall, leggy, and had dyed hair (usually blonde or a caramel colour) and had brown/orange tanned skin. Having tanned skin in Asian countries is usually not something you see, but according to Tim (and Google Image), I’ve basically described a “Shibuya Girl”.

After shopping, we went to the train station and stood inside on an overpass to take pictures and videos of the busy crossing just outside Shibuya station. It’s so crazy how many people are in Shibuya at one time as each time the light changes it’s like a new set of hundreds of people cross the street.

As it was our last meal in Tokyo, we weren’t sure what type of Japanese food we wanted. I was leaning towards sushi again and Tim wanted curry (he always wants curry). We decided to meet up with William for dinner back in Shinjuku and decided on going to CoCo Ichibanya (Tim’s favourite). But since I wanted a bit of sushi, Tim and I had a little snack in Shibuya at Sushizanmai first and ordered a few pieces of our favourites before heading to Shinjuku. I could probably eat sushi every day here. We were pretty much in and out of Sushizanmai within 15 minutes of sitting down.

We met William at the CoCo Curry near Shinjuku Station. This location is smaller than others and has a lot of foot traffic so we had to wait a bit before being seated. We sat at the counter and watched them prepare the dishes. I was actually pretty impressed that they cook each order’s curry in an individual pot. The curry was good and it hit the spot for Tim.

I can’t believe how fast a week went by in Tokyo. There’s so much to see in Tokyo as each neighbourhood is almost like visiting a different city. Luckily for Vancouverites, flying to Tokyo is not THAT far away and there’s multiple direct flights on several airlines making it very accessible to us. I would like to come back and see more as a week was definitely not long enough.

Steps today: 24,000

Hiroshima (Day 40): Peaceful Day

April 9, 2016

Today we left Fukuoka at 9:45am and took the Shinkansen (high-speed rail) to Hiroshima. We planned on spending one night in Hiroshima on our way to Osaka, where we’ll be spending a week. Our plan was also to use Hiroshima as a base to check out Miyajima tomorrow.

The Shinkansen train to Hiroshima, which is about 285km from Fukuoka, only took an hour. If only all trains were bullet trains. Once we arrived at Hiroshima Station, we lined up for the street cars to take us close to our hotel. My first impression of Hiroshima when we got off the train was that there are a lot of non-Asian tourists. There were a lot of Americans and Europeans all around the station, I don’t think I’ve seen so many non-Asians in one place since leaving Vancouver.

The street car ride was a bit of a painful ride down, it took about half an hour to get close to our hotel (the same amount of time Google says it would take us to walk). For some reason we were stuck at a stop for about 8 minutes. The subway card (IC card) we got in Fukuoka was not compatible with Hiroshima’s transit system (one of the only major cities in Japan that doesn’t make its card compatible with others) so we had to use coins to pay for our fare, which was 160 JPY = $1.92 CAD each.

We finally made it to Hotel Sunroute around noon. Check in time was supposed to be at 2pm, but when we checked in they had a room ready for us. We settled down and planned to go for lunch and then go to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The room was nice and clean and it had the exact same layout as the hotel in Fukuoka. I showed a picture to my Mom and she said it’s the same layout as my parent’s hotel in Tokyo. I guess most Japanese hotel rooms are the same (Tim: based on Kait’s sample size of 3).

While looking up lunch options on Trip Advisor, it was mainly okonomiyaki restaurants and the number one ranked location was called “Nagata-ya”. Okonomiyaki is a savoury Japanese “pancake” and is mainly associated with Hiroshima and Osaka, although the two cities’ versions of okonomiyaki are quite different. The Osaka version is more popular outside of Japan, and if you have Okonomiyaki in Vancouver, it’s probably Osaka style.

We walked down the river towards the restaurant while passing by the Memorial Peace Park. The river and bridges around the memorial are quite nice and remind me a bit of a European city (Tim: I think Kaitlyn associates any city with bridges over rivers/canals as being “European-like”, or if there are taller buildings around, “Chicago-like”). The area was busy with tourists but at the same time, it felt very peaceful and calm.

When we got to Nagata-ya, there was a long line up. We decided to just stick it out and line up. The line up was mainly tourists, as expected given the location of the restaurant and how many foreign tourists we saw walking around the area. We waited about half an hour before being seated at the counter.

The okonomiyaki was good, but it was different because all elements were layered instead of being mixed together (which is what I’m more used to). The okonomiyaki was pretty big, so half way through, I think we both regretted not sharing one instead (at least I did). But I think having waited in line for a while, it made us feel like we should just order our own (rookie mistake). Overall it was good, but I’m sure we could’ve gone to any place and it would’ve been good too and we wouldn’t have to wait.

After lunch we walked to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The cost per person is 200 JPY = $2.40 CAD. Apparently the prices have gone up since April 1st as it used to be only 50 JPY. Part of the museum is closed for renovations so it was basically just the Main Hall that was available for viewing. When we entered the exhibit, the place was packed, so going through each item and reading the plaques took a while.

The museum wasn’t as extensive as I thought it would be, which is a bit of a shame. Tim says the exhibit that was closed explained more about Hiroshima pre-atomic bomb, which would have been interesting (Tim: There was also a lot more about Hiroshima’s ongoing global role in promoting the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons). It’s always a bit depressing to go to any museum of this sort. It’s been 70 years since the atomic bomb was dropped, the city has gone from rumbles to a beautiful one that represents a plea for world peace.

(Tim: It’s too bad that half the museum was being renovated, but I have no doubt it’ll be great when they’re finished. I hope they find opportunity to showcase more individual survivor stories as I find those most compelling. At the end of the museum, they have a row of video monitors where you can queue up videos of survivors giving their first hand accounts of the day. They reminded me of John Hersey’s New Yorker article, “Hiroshima“, which I highly recommend reading in its entirety if you haven’t read it before.)

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Hiroshima castle, where we stumbled upon a ceremony taking place outside one of the shrines. The park looked like it used to have cherry blossoms all around, but now the majority of them are gone.

As we were still really full from lunch, we went back to the hotel and caught up with some writing and rested a bit before going out for a late dinner. Tim did a bit of research on what else Hiroshima is known for, food wise, and he found that tsukemen ramen is from here. Tsukemen is where you dip the noodles and other ingredients into a small bowl of soup/sauce. At around 8:30pm we headed out to find the restaurant, but when we got to the location, it was closed! They had a sign saying they relocated, but we couldn’t read it or understand the map.

We decided to go back to the main area close to us, Hondori, where we saw a lot of shops and restaurants. There was a CoCo Curry (Tim’s favourite) so we ended up going there for dinner. The last time we had CoCo Curry was in Bangkok, when we were craving something other than Thai food. Tim ordered chicken cutlet curry and I had the hamburger steak. It was pretty tasty and hit the spot for both of us.

We walked back to the hotel with full stomachs and prepared for tomorrow morning’s activities in Miyajima. We also FaceTimed my nephew, Nate, who was dancing the hokey pokey for us!

Hiroshima is a beautiful city with a very sad history. While standing on the bridge on such a beautiful day, you can’t help but imagine the horrors of that day (being right around the hypocenter of the A-bomb) on August 6, 1945. We can only pray that an attack like that will never happen again.

Steps today: 19,500