Japan: YELLOW

And now for another color: yellow!

Spoiler: there is going to be a lot of food in this post! The bowl of soba noodles above was really special. In a tiny restaurant (6 seats) in the street in Kyoto where we used to live (tetsugaku no michi), a cook makes a very delicious and simple dish out of the soba noodles he makes himself. He also harvests the buckwheat they’re made of. You could see him through a window prepping the meals:

Yeah, the best soba we’ve ever eaten. And it was so nice that it was so close to our old house in Kyoto! Nostalgic and delicious.

Now over to Kyoto sandwiches! They are so good at it!! Here is an egg-sando.

Here we went to a beautiful tofu restaurant… we’ve known this restaurant since 2011 when we would walk past here to go downtown. Back then we were poor students and couldn’t afford it (we lived of 10 euro per day), but now, 13 years later, we could give it a try!

Beautiful little dishes with many different types and preparations of tofu. It was so good and such an experience!

And now for some fried food, like tempura!
Sooooo muuuuch tempura. Markets full of tempura.
Yes, a tempura lantern! I want one.

Not all Japanese food is healthy! There is a strong salaryman culture, joints with beer and fried food. And Osaka, especially Shinsekai is THE place to experience it. We happened to have a few appointments in that area for a certain tattoo-related topic (more on that in the next and final post!), and so we went out to have some real kushikatsu!

It’s not tempura! The batter is thicker and it is a mix of meats, sausages and vegetables. It’s quite famous in Osaka.
Above is Billiken, the superweird mascot of Osaka, a lucky god of “things as they should be”, conjured up by an art teacher from Kansas city in 1896. Yes this is true, look it up haha.
Now let’s jump into a whole different atmosphere. From Osaka we went to Ikoma, in Nara. This small town is in the center between Osaka, Kyoto and Nara. It is a beautiful village next to a mountain and we had the honor to stay in a beautiful old Japanese cottage.
The tatami rooms all were looking out over the garden.

And from this lovely place we explored Nara. This city is famous for its temples (boasting the world’s largest wooden structure) and ofcourse the park full if not overrun by “shika”, deer.
We bought a few lucky charms at the temple.
Before this gorgeous sunset though we explored the huge temples in the park.

And ofcourse there were a lot of deer everywhere!

And guess what. There was a huge FOOD festival when we were there! XD

Deliciousssss

And from beautiful Nara, it is now time to jump into the nightlife! In Kyoto, we had an amaaaazing experience when we walked into a bar called “kingdom”, which turned out to be a rich salaryman bar with the best bartenders and cocktails and an atmosphere straight out of an anime.

best drinks ever, made to fit our personal taste by our fantastic bartender.
We explored many more bars, cafes and restaurants, and here are some of the funny and delicious things we encountered!
Our favorite ramen place, Ichiran, has little signs for anything you want to communicate without actually having to communicate with someone haha.
We visited some izakaya’s as well, some were as small as one bar with 5 seats and serving only Gyoza (dumplings), others were food palaces with every dish imaginable on the menu.
Okonomiyaki! And I haven’t even shown the takoyaki even, the special ones we got in Kobe:
Dotonbori in Osaka was full of food options AND they showed my project on big screens! How cool is that!

I think I’ll wrap up this post with some more of those nice sunsets!

Don’t worry, the next post will be not only about food ;)