cooking-tokyo.blogspot.com

Hello everyone! Today we would like to introduce our new blog cooking-tokyo.blogspot.com!

Since we went to Japan we have been asked a lot what we usually eat over here. Of course we enjoy eating sushi every now-and-then but we mainly do our cooking at home. There are a lot of Japanese dishes you can make yourself that taste really good, are much healthier than the average fast food restaurant, and are much cheaper too. Cheap is good and when good is cheap it's even better :).

So to answer the question 'what do you eat over there?' we made cooking-tokyo.blogspot.com. A website dedicated to all the meals we prepare in Tokyo which you can make yourself too!

In addition to just posting pictures, we also make small recipes movies. These will be posted on the new blog but also on our youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/Schaberg86

We are absolutely no cooking professionals but we just have fun making all these dishes. Hopefully you will enjoy them too.

Here's a little preview on how to make macha yoghurt ice cream. いただきます!

Asakusa festival: Sanja matsuri

Two years ago we accidentally visited the Sanja matsuri when we happened to visit Asakusa in the weekend during the festival. Because we really enjoyed the festival that time, so we decided to visit it again this year. The Asakusa festival is normally held in the third weekend in May. This year the weather was great, and is was very busy with lots of people visiting the popular festival.

Road to the temple

Entrance to the temple grounds

The festival is held in celebration of the Shinto gods of the Asakusa temple and shrines. During the festival many mikoshi, portable shrines, are carried around the streets. They are accompanied  by groups of people from each different Asakusa neighbourhood while making music and singing. It is a very enjoyable festival to experience while walking around Asakusa, and seeing different mikoshi and performances around the streets.
 

Mikoshi carriers

Dance Parade avant la lettre

Another aspect that makes the festival popular is the huge amount of all different food stalls gathered around Asakusa's big temple. They are selling all sorts of delicious food and sweets. Going to the festival just to eat is can be a day trip on its own. We took some pictures of various food stalls and the food they are making to give you an impression of this delicious part of the festival.

An egg/vegetable waffle makes for a nice snack

Okonomiyaki with ham, noodles, egg and vegetables. Perfect lunch!

Fish on a stick

Takoyaki: octopus in dough balls with mayonaise and tonkatsu sauce. Daphne's favorite.

Yakitori and vegetables

Most indecent food ever! Chocolate banana on a stick

Roasted pork, Disney style!

Sky Tree to left, pagoda to the right

Tokyo Disney Sea

Last Friday was not a typical school day, as our school had an event scheduled for that day. The trimester agenda said we were to have an 'undokai', or sports event, with our classes. It turned out to be a whole other kind of event though....

Instead of sweating on some sports field, we went on a trip to Tokyo Disney Sea! Disney Sea is a one-of-a-kind Disney theme park focussing on a more mature audience. Inspired by the myths and legends of the sea, Tokyo Disney Sea is made up of seven themed areas: Mediterranean Harbor, Mystery Island, Mermaid Lagoon, Arabian Coast, Lost River Delta, Port Discovery and American Waterfront. 

Magic Mickey

The park is absolutely spectacular. It has amazing detailed landscaping (including a volcano), the attractions are very modern and high-tech which make them very fun and interesting to ride. Fortunately last Friday was a very quiet day by Disney standards, so we didn't have to stand in the infamous 3-hour long lines.

Our day started with each individual class exploring the park together. After three o'clock the trip was officially over but we were encouraged to stay as long as we wanted. So, back we went through the gates to start part II of the school trip.

One of the main attractions was the Tower of Terror in the American Waterfront area. A free-fall type attraction that is located inside a haunted elevator. The elevator brings you to the top of the tower where suddenly the windows open so you can get a brief view of the scenery before you crash down to earth. Scary!
Another popular attraction was the Indiana Jones Adventure, where you get a wild jeep drive through the Temple of the Chrystal Skull. Actually it reminded us a lot of sitting in a car with a certain former roommate of ours behind the wheel...
Mysterious Island features a submarine simulation ride which takes you to the depths of the dark ocean where the merfolk live. In Port Discovery there was a storm simulator that puts you in a helicopter designed to control the weather. Of course everything goes wrong and you escape death just by a few inches...

The park also had some spectacular parades and shows. Since the park was sea-themed all parades and shows were held in boats. In the afternoon we enjoyed a great show, and in the evening we could enjoy another show full of wonderful light-effects. The whole park was by then beautifully decorated in lights. The evening ended with fireworks above the Tokyo Disney Sea park, after which we went (very tired) back home after a great day.

Aladdin's Genie

Daphne in front of the Tempel of Doom

The volcano

The Haunted House...

Kasai Rinkai Park & Tokyo Sealife Aquarium

Even though our school has started again this week and we are spending our days studying, we want to give an update of our last spring holiday activity. In the last week of our vacation we visited the largest park in central Tokyo: the Kasai Rinkai Park and the Tokyo Sealife Aquarium.

The Kansai Rinkai Park is located at the outskirts of Tokyo and very close to Tokyo Disneyland. The park is a nice get-a-way from the busy city, and nice place to stroll around the various gardens, the beach and enjoy a nice view!

You can actually see the some attractions of Tokyo Disneyland from the park.

Located inside the park is the Tokyo Sealife Aquarium. A very nice aquarium showing many fish, sea-birds and penguins. The most impressive attraction is the big tuna tank. Here the viewing area is in the centre, and you stand in the middle of an incredible amount of tuna fish.

Below you can see the video I was making

More pictures at the photo album
Video's can be found here

Breakfast at Tsukji fish market

Because school is starting again next week and our days will be filled with studying, we decided to have a delicious Japanese breakfast before the spring vacation was over. So we woke up early and headed to Tsukiji fish market to find ourselves a nice restaurant for the perfect breakfast.

Tsukiji is a big fish market, where it is very busy with sellers and buyers of fish. You see lots of men driving around on 'standing cars', in order to transport the sold fish. You have to be careful when walking through the fish market to get to the various restaurants located at the side of the market. There are really lots of shops selling sushi and sashimi meals, it is a treat just to look around the different restaurants trying to decide on a place to eat! Some places are really popular and will have a big queue lined up in front of the store (or even continuing on the other side of the street!)

We chose a nice restaurant (with only a little queue) where they served our favourite fish meals: a salmon and tuna sashimi bowl served with sushi rice, pickles and miso-soup! It was really delicious, and the best raw fish meals we have ever tried. We would love to get here more often to try the different meal.

Queue to our restaurant

Salmon dish

Tuna bowl

Ghibli day Part II: Edo-Tokyo Open air museum

After the morning-visit to the Ghibli museum we got on the JR Chuo Line again, and travelled a few station to the Edo-Tokyo open air museum. The museum was a perfect fit for our Ghibli themed day as it was the inspiration for the buildings in the spirit world of Spirited Away. The museum is located in an enormous park filled with cherry blossom trees. We were a little early in the season to see them in full bloom but when they do it will be wonderful place to be. 

The open air museum exhibits buildings of great cultural value, constructed in Tokyo between the Edo-period (1602-1868) and the post-World War II period. However, most of the buildings exhibited are constructed in the Meiji Period (1868-1912) or more recent times. Among the buildings are former residences of influential politicians, farm houses, a public bathhouse, and various stores and craft shops.

It were these Meiji Period buildings that inspired Ghibli director Miyazaki when he was writing the story for Spirited Away. In an interview he stated that he set the movie in the atmosphere of the Pseudo-Western style buildings of the Meiji era (mixture of typical Japanese and Western design) seen in this museum. "I feel nostalgic here, especially when I stand here alone in the evening, near closing time, and the sun is setting--tears well up in my eyes."

The 'evil' spirit in front of the bath house

Miyazaki and the spirit displayed in the museum.

Just like the movie, the shops are filled with goods as if bus loads of customers could arrive any minute. This gives the eerie impression something is wrong, as if the shops are waiting for the spirits of nature to arrive when the museum closes and night falls...

We would show some pictures of the exhibitions that clearly shows the inspirations for the movie:

These corridors resemble the halls Chihiro had to clean in the bath house

Foreign spirit boarding the tram

The panels with orders for the bath heater

Bath house entrance

Right is for female spirits, left for male

Beautiful mural

Traditional Japanese bar

So much liquor and still it's called a 'soya sauce' shop

The shopping street leading to the bath house

 

There were various other buildings to be seen and entered at the museum. We will show some of the buildings that impressed us the most. 

The picture below is made in the Tokiwadai Photo Studio. Built in 1937 it incorporated some 'high tech' photo features in its architecture. The windows are exceptionally large and made of 'frosted glass'. This improves the diffusion of the light and provides more depth and realism to photo's. Nowadays we probably use apps for that.

The Tokiwadai Photo Studio (1937)

Below is the residence of Mitsui family (also know as the Mitsui zaibatsu). The house is actually made from two other family residences that got badly damaged during World War II. The guest room and dining room were constructed around 1897 in Kyoto, and was originally designed as a Japanese tea house. The storehouse was built in 1874 in Tokyo. After the war the family built a new western style residence in Tokyo and decided that their damaged property should be salvaged as much as possible. Thus this 'patch work' house came into existence in 1952. In combination with the beautiful garden it actually feels as if this conjuncture of styles was always what the architects envisioned.

Entrance and former tea house section

Dining room and guest room

A big surprise was the House of Koide. After architect Sutemi Horiguchi returned from his travels through Europe, his designs were greatly inspired by European architecture. The House of Koide is a very well balanced fusion between typical Dutch elements and original Japanese architecture. See for yourself: