tsewei’s blog

woohoo! Au Yong applied for leave and it’s approved so we’re headed west to ex-Japan-capitol Kyoto next week!

Will be our first time on the shinkansen (bullet train). I love trains.

Wanted to stay in a traditional ryokan, but turns out they’re pretty expensive in Kyoto. Especially compared to the great package deal we got at JR Tours: Shinkansen + Westin Miyako Hotel + breakfast = 30500yen. w00t! travel in style, baybeee! LOL

So excited. Now gotta plan out travel routes and mark out all the temples + shrines that I wanna see. Ooh, Gion too. geishas! (i hope)

1 piece fresh salmon

1 sachet pasta mushroom cream sauce (for 2)

pepper & parsley for flavour

linguine (too much for 2 person)

1 bottle of red wine

2 sachets of onion consomme soup (just add boiling water)

1 bottle of expired oil (ditched this & substituted with butter)

1 tiny stove

1 bigass cooking pot

1 happy first-time pasta cook (him)

1 pasta-cooking instructor (me)

1 manual dishwasher (me)

2 hungry tummies

1 scrumptious pasta dinner

I never really liked beer. Gassy, bloats me up, bleah. Quite puke-inducing sometimes too, so, definitely bleah.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. For example, Brewerkz. And since my Tokyo visit, Japanese beer. And I’ve just discovered something else — Hoegaarden beer!

Friday night — TGIF (for Au Yong), and a little treasure hunt downtown.

Armed with a not-so-detailed map, we walked up and down the streets of Shinjuku, and finally by a stroke of luck, located our dinner place nestled in a narrow dark alley.

Cafe Hoegaarden. A tiny restaurant serving Belgian food, and of course, Hoegaarden beer!

- the Hoegaarden Grand Cru for him, and the Hoegaarden Le Fruit Defendu for me. Mine’s fruity (yay), his is a little stronger (hic), both excellent stuff. -

Au Yong’s been telling me about this beer ever since his Auckland trip, and after trawling the net for an hour, I decided that this place is worth checking out.

And it was definitely a good choice. Although we had to wait a bit for seats (that tiny place really couldn’t fit more than 20 customers), and we panicked when we *wrongly* realised that the menus could be only in Japanese (turns out there are *some* English labelling.), we were soon sipping nice strong ale, and feasting on yummylicious food.

I must have eaten like ten mussels. (We managed to translate “mussles” on his handphone and picked out the correct item to order kihkihkih..) And they’re fat, juicy, succulent and fresh. Nothing like the tiny anoroxic ones I get back home. And this comes with a healthy serving of carrots, celery, and onion. *slurp* Yummy with the beer too.

And now, it’s time for my little observation on beer:

• beer back home (like Tiger, and Carlsberg.. the import from Thailand types) — icky. refer to: first para of this blog post.
• Japanese beer (like Asahi and Yebisu) — dry and smooth. Goes down really well, and suspiciously all Japanese food taste good with them, so you’d eat and drink and eat and drink and not realise how much you’ve actually drunk (and eaten).
• Hoegaarden — strong, but nice flavour. Can’t drink a lot of it, but it tastes good.

whee~ My tummy loves this country. heheh.

Visited Odaiba last week. It’s an artificial island south of Tokyo, with artificial beach (hmm sounds like Sentosa island haha) and an abundance of weird architechture that was born out of the excesses of the 80s economy (and maybe too high a dosage of sci-fi movies too).

Au Yong was actually there for some tech-geek exhibition for his work purposes blabla zzz zzz. So I tagged along and was left to wander in a fake Venician town for FOUR hours. eecks.

VenusFort, as the name might already suggests, is a shopping place, for women. With of course a special setting — computer-generated skies that changes from dusk till dawn (looks quite real actually), set in stores lined along a fake Venician street, complete with fake cobbles. But it’s kinda cool actually.

I got conned to pay 300yen for an itsy-bitsy piece of strawberry tart at a cafe. Sigh. But it smelt so good it was hard to just walk away from the cafe.
Also, I bought a pair of red shoes!! RED! whee…

Anyway, check out the ferris wheel! It’s huge, and it was the largest in the world, until the London Eye came along and burst their bubble.

The view was fantastic up there. Could see the city skyline all the way, Tokyo Tower and everything. Very very cool. Plus, from the outside, the wheel changes colour. Sorta like the Rainbow Bridge that connects the island to the city.

I like this one. Though the 16-minute ride seemed a little too short. But it was fun. It’s been ages since I’ve been on a ferris wheel.