Sunday, April 12, 2009

11th April 2009 - Tokyo to Hakata


Today's blog is going to be short (compared to yesterdays standards)..

We're going to be travelling on bullet trains today from Tokyo to the south of Japan for about 9 hours which means we're going to blow most of the day in transit.

But that didn't stop us from squeezing in some goodies in Tokyo before our marathon transit!

Firstly, I took a pic of Otsuka station as it is today.. chances are I'm going to come back here the next time I visit Tokyo and I figured I should have a "then" and "now" shot prepared for the future.



Here's an instance of a major change at Otsuka station... When I last stayed here 3 years ago, there were no escalators or lifts.. just a long stairway from the street level to the JR rail platform. This posed a massive challenge for me as I had to carry a backpack (roughly 15kg at the time), 2 x large luggage bags (about 25kg each) and my camera gear. I almost had a cardiac arrest by the time I reached the top of the staircase... so the below picture was a huge relief for me this time around!


I was expecting a ghost town at Tokyo station today (it is 10am Saturday afterall)... I was wrong...



We made the executive decision to pay a visit to Damaru again and this time we wouldn't leave empty handed! I managed to get a better look at what the people in my previous post were lining up for.. they looked like layer cakes cooked on a spit... For a queue this long (even on a Saturday) this must be worth lining up for... Pity we had a bullet train to catch as I would have LOVED to see what the fuss is about.


Ee Laine made her choice of dessert from this selection:

It took the person behind the counter a good 5 minutes packaging and boxing the cake... I mean seriously dude.. we just wanted to munch on it then and there... He even put an Ice bag on it to keep the cake at a perfect temperature up until the moment you put it into your mouth... As he went through all that trouble.. we had to wait until later to scoff it down (I could have ripped the packaging apart in front of him - caveman style - but Japan is a civil society and it would have been slightly inappropriate to do so).
Here is the said packaging with ice pack.


My choice was made with the below choices...



After waiting a good hour after purchase, and seated comfortably in the large Shinkansen seats... we opened the icy treasure chest to reveal the goodies we bought at Daimaru






For the price we paid for the desserts (500Y for the Strawberry Cake and 300Y for the Fruit Tart) - they were by far the best desserts money could buy (with the exception of that liquid strawberry cheesecake from Tetsuyas - but you'd need to eat a whole heap of seafood and kiss half a week's salary goodbye to to have it). These two scored a perfect 10 in my books.
8 hours after departing Tokyo station and covering vast distances of Japan via 2 bullet trains, we finally reached our destination for the evening... Hakata Station.



As we were finding our bearings to figure out where our hotel was located, this little rice box drifted past me.


After dropping off our gear, we went hunting for food.. we haven't eaten a proper meal (aside from those yummy desserts) for the whole day and I was in a pretty grumpy mood for it. This was one of (if not the ONLY) mall near Hakata station which had a decent selection of food.


We (rather Ee laine) didn't feel like Mos Burger again so we settled on a non English speaking joint in this establishment.



This little restaurant was very cosy inside... the pace here is a lot slower and less hectic than what we had experienced in Japan.. Still the food came out in less than 4 minutes from the placement of order.



My choice for the evening was the Pork Katsudon - tasted fairly standard (I'm getting quite picky with Japanese food now)


Ee settled for the Pork Katsu/Prawn Tempura combo with rice and Udon... The funny thing is that this is the first instance that Ee Laine has ordered MORE food than I have in one sitting yet I was the grumpy mofo as a result of starvation.


The exciting conclusion to my evening included an early night back at the hotel (all the shops here closed at 8pm - LAME!) - Decided to use the coin operated laundromat/dryer... there's another 1.5 hours of my life I'll never get back... Today was definitely a writeoff... hopefully tomorrow's visit to the Canal City will be way more interesting!

1 comment:

  1. Cool....always wondered what life was like outside of Tokyo, in the smaller cities.

    ...also I am liking the "pastry tour of Japan" :)

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