Yes, we succeeded in fulfilling our goal, we both got a job as a concept artist at a Japanese game company! Marthe will work at Capcom (huge gamestudio in Osaka, famous for games as Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Phoenix Wright). Ward will work on an exciting new project at Tango Gameworks ( a new studio in Tokyo, founded by Shinji Mikami, designer of Resident Evil).

We were interviewed about our adventures in Japan by Karel Millenaar and Niels t Hooft for their podcast on bashers.nl. Click here if you want to listen to our stories ( in Dutch)

podcast

This will be the last post I’ll write from our lovely house in Kyoto! Tomorrow we are going back to the Netherlands. However, there is a big big chance we’ll return to Japan this summer :-p So it’s not really goodbye!

March is the month of Plum blossom! Just as beautiful as the cherry blossoms! We had a farewellparty/picnic in Osaka Castle park last week, which was very nice. In this park, there is an actual “plum grove”, a huge field filled with blossoming plums in all different kinds of colors. So beautiful!! So here are some photos

Even though we’ve lived in Kyoto for 1,5 years now, we still discover new and beautiful spots in the city. Today we walked to the river and crossed a secluded temple area where a wedding was going on. It was beautiful! Alongside the river we were surrounded by bird of prey trying to catch fish, herons, all kinds of ducks and a cute muskrat Kyoto is such a peaceful city, we’re really going to miss this place!

“We went to the countryside”!

Our good friend Tokutaro-san took us to his grandmother, who lives in the countryside of the Kyoto prefecture. He took us by car through the most beautiful areas of Kyoto. First we went to Miyama-cho. This is a lovely village surrounded by misty mountains and water. The area is famous for its thatched roof houses, which all bear a different family crest. The shape of the roof is unique in Japan, and it is this way because of the heavy snow in winter. If the roofs would be flat, the houses would collapse. When we visited the village, there was actually still a thick pack of snow on some of the roofs (even though in Kyoto it has been aournd 15 degrees lately!).

After Miyama-cho, we drove further to the west and stopped by a lovely soba-place. The restaurant was hidden in a small village between the mountains, a place you would never discover without a car and someone telling you about it (Tokutaro’s brother recommended this place). The soba was absolutely delicious!!

The road continued alongside the beautiful Yura river, which has a very deep green/blue color because of the minerals in the ground. We had a brief stop at the Ono Dam, an incredible sight to see especially since there was more water because of the rain.

The dam was really impressive!

The Kyoto countryside: Beware of bears!!

It was raining a lot, causing these beautiful mists in the mountains:

Finally, around 3 pm we arrived at the traditional house of Tokutaro’s grandmother. His aunt and uncle also live there and they showed us around the beautiful houses they own.

The Tokutaro family has a famous piano player: Aisa Ijiri. This piano belongs to her mother, and in this beautiful space she can give mini-concerts for the family!

Playing Guilty Gear on the kotatsu (heated table).

Afterwards we had a very delicious dinner with all kinds of local ingredients like mountain herbs and even a soup with fresh wild boar, hunted by a friend of the family!

We went home late that night, and had a fantastic experience. The rural area of Kyoto is so beautiful, the atmosphere is unique and meeting Tokutaro’s nice family was amazing!!!

Dotonbori is a huge shopping/eating/drinking/partying area in Osaka. At night, the thousands of neon lights are lit and hundreds of people are walking around looking for a place to eat. Restaurants make the most elaborate signs on their walls to hopefully stand out amidst the neon craziness.

Hmmmm where shall we eat…

Maybe some takoyaki?

Or crab…

Blowfish…

Beef maybe?

Or barbecue? With intestines I might add, mmmm….

Or perhaps we’ll grab some sushi…

Chinese food…

Okonomiyaki sounds nice!

Ramen:

And I don’t know what you can eat here but the guy seems very pissed off…

(We went for the okonomiyaki )

Joris is trying the ultimate Japanese food challenge: Natto! Natto is smelly fermented beans, and is often eaten with breakfast in Japan. Not our taste in food though…

Yay happy birthday Ward! We celebrated by going to a “kaiseki” restaurant called Grotto, located near our house. Kaiseki is a very traditional Japanese multi-course dinner. Our dinner had 9 courses of the most delicious and real Kyoto style foods. Ofcourse we made a lot of pictures

We ordered some fantastic Japanese sake. Ofcourse, the bottle was handed to me because in traditional Japanese cuisine, the woman always poors the sake for the men haha.

Course 1: Turnip dumpling with soup:

Course 2: Kyoto Specialty Scallion Dumpling. The scallions had a fantastic taste, according to the (english speaking!) chef this was the scallion season The red-white thing was ginger, really tasty:

Course 3: Sashimi. Red snapper and tuna in this case, and wow that tuna was delicious…

Course 4: Sea eal roll in a sauce of eggs. Absolutely amazing :-p

Course 5: “Seven items”. This was definitely the most exotic dish! There was mountain herb tempura, wasabi leaves (really spicy!), chicken liver (really nice soft taste), Oil sardine, baby octopus on toast, seashell sashimi and chicken breast in sea weed dressing:

A closeup of the baby octopus  

Course 6 (by this time I was getting quite full :-p): Baked Spanish mackerel covered in mountain potato (which looked like and tasted a bit like marshmellow )

Course 7: Fresh Pork in a vegetables-miso pot. Wow, this looked fantastic and tasted even better! It was served with course 8: butterbur rice (and the chef gave us two more portions of this delicious rice to take home and eat later )

Course 9, the final course was a delicious dessert of sweet red bean soup and baked sweet potato ice cream!

We sat on the counter, so we could see how the chef prepared all these lovely dishes:

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