Eating Too Much in Japan-PART I

Shit.

A visit to the 7-11 nearby shortly, and I see Andrea Fonseka splashed all over the magazine covers on all the racks. She looked especially lovely on the covers of Style: Wedding in that plunging neck gown, being all ribey and elegant.

She's getting slimmer, while yours truly is piling on the weight.

And if I continue gorging down $4 of Char Kuay Tiao and large plates of chicken rice now that I'm back, I can kiss my modelling career good bye and start selling off my fats in the black market for breast/ass implants.

The trip to Japan helped in making me fat too, since I made it a goal to eat as much juicy fatty slabs of beef in Kobe-Osaka; chunks of fresh sashimi, crabs of all kinds, fresh scallops just hauled in at daybreak that are so fresh that you can almost taste the ocean; bowls of sticky fragrant pearl rice; HUGE and unbelievably sweet fruits, Veges and beans sold on the racks of super market, and the prettily wrapped sweet snacks of what-nots. Never mind what they contain, because half the time I don't know. I just want to eat them.
To make it worse, even their 7-11 convenience store food is drool-worthy and fresh (can you even belief that?!) that I make it a point to eat supper almost everyday.

Just to illustrate my point:

Day 1 : First meal in downtown Tokyo Shibuya. A little hole-in-the-wall shop that sells excellent Tori-niku (barbecued chicken)


Even though it's my 8th time in Japan, and my 3rd time visiting Tokyo, I am still intrigued by it's over abundance of vending machines that dispenses even hot-canned coffee, so I had to spend some tourist coins on a couple of cutsie canned-drinks that screams at you to pick them up.



Day 2: Is when we start our eating crusade.
We started off the day at 6:15am, and set off to the Tsukiji Fish Market to witness some slaughtering and bartering of the freshest/biggest catch of the day.



Then fresh Sashimi for breakfast...



Then being the typical "monkey see monkey do" Singaporean, whose favourite pastime is joining in a queue just because there is a queue and food is involved, I joined the queue right after eting Sashimi



And was promptly served with with a hot bowl of thick pork broth ramen. Suddenly I feel like I'm never ever going to step into Ajisen ever again.


After which, at Asakusa, a former old town in downtown Tokyo, I ate lots of nibblies again. Because everything that was edible looked yummy.


Went to Ginza in search of all the legendary tidbit/confectionary stores with long queues no matter the time of the day. We found 2 on our list of 5, that were side by side, and we blew about 1000yen on waffles, mochis and melon cakes.


That was appetizer, we said, so for dinner, we went to Daimaru after 8pm, when most of their perishable food stuff and bento sets are going for 30-50% less the marked price. So over bought and over ate. As usual~~



Day 3: Finally we're setting off to Hakodate, at the southern-tip of Hokkaido, one of Japan's few port city that was partially opened for foreign trade during the period of Meiji Restoration.

But before the long 7 hour ride on the bullet train, we went to Tokyo's Imperial Palace which was coincidendally near the train station. The sky was fair, the wind was gentle, and all that lugging the luggage around made us very hungry. So we went for a picnic at the park outside of the Imperial Palace.

Then I spotted this really cute advertisement for their MacDonald's new Cheese Cutlet Burger, and greedy me wanted to eat it.



Had Melons and Coffee too.


We also bought a BAG of food for the JR train ride, across the strip of Ocean that separates Kyushuu and Hokkaido. 3 types of sandwiches, 1 currant pastry, a bag of Tomatoes, 1 large Fuji APple, and I eat so much that I forgot what else I ate.

Then, upon arrival in Hakodate, which was already 8 plus at night, we went for dinner after checking in at Nice Day Inn. DInner at a Hakodate Beer Garden, at the recommendation of our inn keeper.

It's worth mentioning that Hakodate Beer is supposed to have a unique taste that is quite unlike the mainstream Japanese beer, perhaps due its European's Influence from the older days.
Kampaii~


Despite the yummy dinner, my appetite was whet by this huge selection of "Everything-looks-good" food...in 7-11, of all places. Ice-creams, Hot Oden, Bento sets with HUGE Grilled chicken that are replaced everyday, sandwiches, salads, pastas... I could go on and on.



Yet, nothing-look like the pruney shrivelled-up sausages in Singapore's 7-11, that looks almost a month old.

I had an ice cream, a yoghurt, some sushi and I went to bed with a round stomach and a shiney nose.

Day 4: Famous for its fresh and monstrously huge seafood just hauled from the sea, we set out to eat the best catch of the day.


Now it moves...




Now it doesn't...


Now I'm eating it and grinning. How sick I am right, gleefully eating it after witnessing its death.


The extremely enterprising Nippon Ah Lian, her beautiful sisters and Mother...


...Who hardsell me into buying their Milk-flavoured ice-cream, which was surprisingly thick, creamy and nothing like the Factory Manufactured Milk flavoured ice-cream that even kids would pass up.

You've seen/eaten Squid Ink Pasta...but Squid Ink Ice cream??????



Then we walked, until we saw a crowd of pre-pubescent school girls sitting outside this place called Lucky Pierrot, chomping down burgers and drinking corn soup.



Which probably means that the food that they serve there is cheap and good.



As we strayed from the group, because they weren’t excited by the idea of looking at colonial churches left over from the Meiji Period (churches in Japan are a rare sight, because of the Emperor’s attempts to contain the spread of ‘fancy foreign ideas’), we found another gem along the way. Cream Puffs - Beard Papa style, made with real Hokkaido cream, for only 88yen (less than $1 sgd).



We bought one initially to try....then we walked back to buy 4 more. Then we walked back to buy the last one on the shelf. It was that good.

For dinner, after staying up on Mt Hakodate for hours, we headed to the supermarket, the cows' favourite place on earth. And we had these...

Plus a wine that was chilling in the fridge while this pictures were taken.


While they had this...



Part II will be up soon. Blogger's "Insert Photo" is a bitch, and Photobucket makes my pictures so huge that I can even see my pores.