Here we are again. My favorite place for breakfast in Tokyo, Hoshino Coffee, doesn’t open until 9am so we went to Berg, a tiny little store we’ve been to before. The food is good, the owner is quite liberal (judging by the signs promoting peace in Palestine and allowing women a quiet place to have a beer) and it’s pretty good. It’s also quite cheap, less than ¥700 for either of these plates and coffee.

Sorry to disturb you but here’s a ridiculous picture of me.

We met my sister’s friend Jen for lunch and it was such a nice day that we walked around Tokyo for a while to get there. We visited my favorite shrine in Tokyo, Kanda Myojin, which turns out is near where Jen works. We met near Tokyo station, though.

We had kushiyaki but very fancy kushiyaki. The fried shrimp wrapped in shiso, negi with chicken, and I think green peppers were only the start of nine or so skewers. I didn’t  take a picture of the soup or the dessert nor do I remember exactly what they were but it was excellent.

After lunch we wandered around central Tokyo for a while and here’s another picture of us in windy (and chilly) Tokyo.

We met another old friend for dinner and we went back to Keio Department store to a tofu restaurant. My dinner doesn’t show my yudofu because I already ate it and it’s kind of boring visually. It was in hot water, in a hot kettle, on that wooden plate.

My sister’s tofu was simmered in soy milk and was probably as bland as mine was. The skewers were good, tofu topped with yuzu miso and black miso.

We got back around 9, and that’s why the comments are short. It’s bedtime now! (It takes me a while to upload and post these pictures.)

We had the breakfast at the hotel which had quite the smorgasbord (they call it “Viking” in Japan because who can be bothered to say “smorgasbord”?) There were even more options like curry, an omelette bar, and the local rice dish but this is what I got. Sadly I couldn’t finish it all and left the soft-boiled egg.

And now it’s off to take a bullet train to Tokyo! I passed out for a while.

Google says it’s quicker to take the rapid express for the last bit, so we did.

For lunch we went to the Keio Department store restaurant floor where Mariko and I were about 20 years too young. Since we had giant breakfasts we thought we’d get a sandwich and thought we were just getting Croque Monsieur but we got gratin as well. Which is good because the gratin was way better than the Croque Monsieur.

Mariko forced me to eat dessert (I was stuffed).

I opted for something with a lot of fruit.

As payback I made her go with me to look at wristwatches. Instead of taking the train a couple of stops, we decided to make it an adventure by taking the bus. What I realized is that Rolexes are ridiculously expensive and I have not won more than $5 in the lottery. what I thought was $5000 looked like more like $50,000. There were too many zeroes to really comprehend what the price was.

And after the news of the evening, we decided to head out and wander for a bit. We found a candy store nearby and went to Mos Burger.

As usual, I was still hungry and went up to get a hot dog and ended up with the seasonal focaccia sandwich instead. The hot dog I wanted curled around barbecue sauce with an egg on top (signifying the moon, since it was moon viewing season in September, right? That’s not a holiday I keep up with.)

We had breakfast at a German Bakery (called German Bakery, if I recall correctly). It wasn’t as good as the coffee shop but we wanted to give it a try. Hot dog and hash brown set. (My hot dog is not deformed, I took a bite before remembering to take a picture.)

One last meeting with the eldest “kid” at one of Japan’s most picturesque Starbucks.

And then it was off on the long ride to Kanazawa (almost 30 minutes on the Shinkansen!)

Blah blah picturesque scenery.

We went to a famous daifuku shop. I had Shine Muscat and Mariko had strawberry. I like strawberry but I got the “limited edition”.

Kanazawa isn’t as big as they think it is. Here are the famous long stairs leading from the shrine to the Higashi Chayamachi geisha district. I guess men would say they were going to the shrine before sneaking off to see the geishas.

We went to the famous shotengai where I swore I’d eat street food but we both just had Kanazawa curry. I got the traditional pork cutlet and Mariko had the grilled veggies. I also got the “medium” which was so filling that I had a hard time eating dinner.

We still had time to kill and ended up at a shrine with quite a unique gateway entrance.

For dinner we went to a restaurant floor and had rice balls. And in typical iPhone fashion, I am missing the picture of my dinner. Here’s Marikos. Mine had karaage insted of the ankake and it was a LOT of chicken.

And then it was back to the Dormy Inn where I had a horrible time sleeping. It’s the season where they like to overheat the rooms and also give you the winter futon comforter which just means it’s too hot for me to sleep. Ugh.

My sister and I insisted we weren’t going to take any more baths in the onsen, but we did anyway. and then it was time for breakfast which was quite good.

We stopped at Anadan Spring (Holy Water) on the way back to Toyama. The youngest “kid”, also Dr. Kawasaki, drinks this water twice a day. You walk down a path and down some stairs, rinse out your jugs, fill them from faucets that go directly to the spring (one of the cleanest in Japan according to something I read). I also read it had radium in it so I took the bottle I filled up and ended up pouring it down the sink.

Also near the spring was a busy temple and they had hot and cold somen there. (I had hot, Mariko had cold.)

Also since the weather cleared up we went up to a viewpoint to see the northern Japanese alps on the way to buying groceries for dinner.

Dinner was at the senior Kawasaki residence and I didn’t bother them by taking pictures. Sorry!

We went to Toyama to see family friends and with that came lots of changes in plans. They lived in Portland when we were younger and we would often visit with our mother. She was friends with the parents, Dr and Mrs. Kawasaki. There were three kids and two of them are the same age as my sister and me. We thought we’d stay for three days and see the city (we usually end up at the home of Dr & Mrs Kawasaki and chatting) but what happened was we stayed the first night, went to an Onsen with the “kids”, and then went to dinner at Dr & Mrs. Kawasaki’s.

Anyway, here’s a view from the hotel room. It was nice, not rainy!

That mosaic building towards the right had an interesting coffee shop with breakfast options. My sister had the Japanese option.

I knew we’d have plenty of Japanese food at the Onsen so I opted for the western version.

We made a stop at Dr. and Mrs. Kawasaki’s for lunch and we decided to go on an adventure to the local Costco instead of cooking. I’ve mentioned Japanese Costco’s before and how they’re almost like US Costco’s but even more ridiculous at times. They have most of the things from the US but the pies are 11” (my sister says standard pies are 9”)!

I forgot to measure these pizzas but I don’t know anyone other than a restaurant that has an oven that can fit these (they’d barely fit in my oven back in Oregon.)

Would you like a little sushi?

We got sandwiches, a different (smaller) pack of sushi, and more croissants than anyone needs.

After lunch it was off to the Onsen, Hotel Ogawa. Here are the pictures from dinner (I missed one course).

The appetizer.

A mochi covered in something.

Pork and tofu cooking.

Salted grilled trout full of eggs.

Tempura.

And finally the rice and soup.

No picture of the dessert either. I remember it being good.

I guess I made no mention of the onsen. There was the main bath with a big bath and a wooden bath outside. There’s also another smaller bath down a long hallway that is also outside and closer to the rapids with no amenities (only four baskets to put your clothes in, no lock boxes, no place to wash yourself) so you need to wash yourself at the main bath first. There’s also other outdoor baths down a trail and I was told it was far and the water wasn’t too warm so I guess I’m happy I skipped that.

OK, more pictures, less snark. Comments will be added later.

OK, it’s later now. Off to Japan again which means getting up at 4am for the 7am flight to Seattle. The reason I fly Delta and pay almost $700 per year for a special AMEX card is so I can have access to the lounge. The waffle was “vegetarian” which means it was made of cardboard and I couldn’t eat it. The rest was fine. Sausage, fruit, eggs, potato, and coffee.

I figured Seattle would be rainy and it didn’t disappoint.

Watched several bad movies (and a good one) on the 11-or-so hours to Japan. Dune 2, The Fall Guy, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Monkey Man, and because of a glitch I only was able to watch part of Hocus Pocus. Hocus Pocus was darker than I expected.

After we arrived and got our bags, we shipped gift packages from Haneda Airport to our friends so we wouldn’t have to carry them around with us. I never hand-write anything anymore and I was having a heck of a time writing kanji and then I found out that Yamato changed their rules and they now let people write addresses in English. Not only that but you can just enter in the addresses at a tablet at the counter. We had seven (?) packages so filling out the forms beforehand was better. My sister stood in line and I filled out forms and by the time I was done she was finally at the front of the line.

I also found out I could just drop off my luggage at the ANA counter next to the Yamato counter so we didn’t have to carry all the luggage on the shuttle bus from Terminal 3 (int’l) -> Terminal 1 (most domestic plus the post office I usually use) -> Terminal 2 (ANA). And unlike the past few times I rode the bus, it wasn’t packed.

We went to check out the restaurants but ended up at the coffee shop I like. It’s out of the way and usually not crowded. I got Japanese Napolitan spaghetti and my sister had the carbonara. By this time I’d been up for over 24 hours so here’s a picture of when I remembered to take it (after I’d already eaten most of it). It’s not what the Italians would call proper spaghetti (or Americans, either) but I like it.

It was raining so hard that flights were delayed throughout Japan. I guess even the Shinkansen had service halted. I fell asleep waiting, and I fell asleep as soon as I got on the plane. I woke up an hour later and thought I must’ve slept through the flight but we were still taxiing! I only woke up long enough to get my free small cup of juice (they often offer juice or tea). The flight to Toyama was under an hour.

I’m not sure why, but there’s always ads on the conveyor belt and in Toyama there were giant sushi!

Our friend met us and drove us to our hotel by Toyama station. And that’s the trip to Japan!