Alright, let’s do this; Food Journey II, from Osaka to the end of our trip. Seeing as how the last post ended with with speculation of what might have caused me to get sick with diarrhea/food poisoning, I still have no idea what it might have been and probably will never know for sure, and that’s ok. Let’s move on with the consideration that I am dying in these first few days, but despite that, still trying my best to eat all the good foods and shit, because come on, it’s Osaka, that’s where so much good food is. Let’s go!

After our frantic shinkansen struggle and trauma, we decided to sit down and eat some of the ekiben that we brought today at Tokyo Station. It should be noted that while my sister was in the shop to buy ekiben, I realized that we only had half an hour before our train was scheduled to leave. I messaged her on my phone to just choose anything for me and go, because we originally were going to just take turns going into the store and buy our own food while babysitting our luggage, we just didn’t have the time. I did not choose my meal and she was already in line to checkout, so she just chose whatever was close to her during the checkout line. With that said, she got me this pork ekiben.

For herself she got this chicken themed one with all sorts of chicken stuff I guess. Nice graphic.

So my ekiben has some marinated ginger/miso pork I think, half an egg and some tofu roll thing. While it was alright, i must say it wasn’t great. It was decent but the pork was dry and they simply didn’t give enough of it, way too much rice and I didn’t care for the egg or tofu skin roll thing. Not the best but it will do given the circumstances.

While I considered my ekiben kind of mediocre, my sister’s one a little better with flavored rice, teriyaki chicken, some ground chicken and egg. Looks not bad although a bit messy since in our rush/panic at the station we actually dropped our bag of ekiben so yea, that explains why they are not in the most pristine looking of arrangements. She said it was alright, since she finished eating before me, I can guess that it was probably better than mine, ah-well.

After a not too long trip and a bit of struggle making our way out from shin-osaka station to the station closest to our hotel in Osaka Namba, I was pretty dead, probably because of the diarrhea and the tireness of travel. We sat down on some ledge near the station exit where there was a lawson nearby. My sister got me a drink, some suspect looking ‘fruit mix’ drink. While it looks sus, don’t judge that shit man, shit’s pretty good lol. Tastes exactly like the picture, pineapple, peach and apple. Good shit.

We dropped off our bags at the hotel and it was too early for checkin so once again we decided to explore the area and look for some stuff to buy/eat. There was a shopping complex nearby with a large supermarket in it so we decided to take a look, or rather, there was a Mister Donuts inside the store and my sister wanted to get some.

Ah yes, Mister Doughnuts, the famous doughnut chain in japan with the pondo rings. When she went to the Mister Doughnut in Akihabara, there was like nothing left, they literally had no more doughnuts to sell, all gone, like what the hell? lol. My guess is that everyone and tourists cleaned them out, since you know, now is the time. Fortunately far way in distant Osaka in some random grocery store meant for locals is this mister donuts to rectify that fail.

My sister ate most of the doughnuts later this night/day. I was too dead to even bother to take photos of the chunks that I ate of doughnut so yea, that’s a miss but maybe she has some photos so that I can remember what I ate.

I kinda previewed it before but man this grocery store has so much good ready to eat food.

I mean they have cheap yakisoba and okanomiyaki just there. Even takoyaki. Wow. When I think about it, I kind of regret not buying at least some of this good looking grocery store food. It’s Osaka stuff too.

Cheap yakitori skwers and beans. Cool.

Wow, even full on tendon/ tempura dons for under 600 yen. Wow. Shit, should have brought some of this shit. Ekiben is just a marketing ploy, grocery store bentos is where it’s at.

More teriyaki chicken and fried chicken nanban I think. Looks good.

Bullshit sandwiches. Good to see that their prices are about the same as conbeni stores. I’m surprised we didn’t pick up a fruit sando that was peaking there in the top right corner since my sister said it’s all the rage.

Wow, frozen gyoza and other dumplings, so dirt cheap. A bag of this shit would easily be like double the price at home.

There bun and bread isle is certainly something to see and witness.

Oh man, the packaging on these burger like buns/hamburgers is suspiciously cheap. Looks so interesting. Lest to say, we picked up a couple to try, we just couldn’t resist the packaging. The price suggests that they will be shit and cheap, but hey, you never know.

Beautiful isles of nihongo meat, ready to be purchased.

Oh wow, we have a high class brand of Wagyu beef for sale, known as ‘Saga beef’ from that region. At only 2945 yen, it’s quite a deal, considering that a REGULAR Angus beef steak of that size at home would cost about the same, i’d take the Wagyu anyday.

Wow, this is some grocery store sushi/sashimi that I would be happy to buy and consume and so cheap too. For 598 yen or roughly $6 cad, I would literally only get some shit like a 6 salmon roll or cucumber roll bullshit. Wow.

After spending a sufficient amount of time in the grocery store, looking at food that we probably should have brought and taken to our hotel to eat; once we were allowed to check in to our hotel, I had forgotten but we still had one more ekiben that we had to eat. Shit. Yea, in haste my sister brought another one at the station and we saved until now. It was one of those self heating ones where you pull a string and steam heats the shit up. It worked pretty good and honestly, this one was probably the best tasting ekiben we had among the three she chose, shit. I was feeling dead so I just ate roughly half of it and my sister finished the rest, along with what I think was another kiddie shinkansen train ekiben. Spicy udon noodles with sauce, beef and some rice, can’t remember the seasoning but it was tasty.

After consuming and finishing the bento we lifted the tray to reveal the magic below, some pack that heats up when you add water I believe which is triggered by pulling the string. Cool. After this we died and slept for like 3-4 hours cause damn, I was dying and my sister was tired too. Hopefully when we wake up with our alarm, we will be hungry for a bite to eat in the evening.

When we woke up it was around 7pm-ish and we were hungry so we headed to Dontonburi to get something to eat and see the place lit up. While lining up for Takoyaki, my sister got this nice 10 yen cheese coin, which is apparently pretty popular on social media. She ate it all, so I can’t say but she said that is was pretty good, very cheesy.

There was a small line up for this Takoyaki place, “Kukuru” which is one of the big names/chains of Takoyaki that have multiple locations all across japan and the region.

Here is our first Takoyaki of the night, pretty solid indeed with a very nice looking tako container. Not satisfied with just one, we decided to go find another Takoyaki place after.

We ended up going to what is known as “Kevin’s Choice” Takoyaki, the place place that he took us in 2014. This place was pretty crowded as well since it was on the onramp/stairs to the lower part of the bridge.

Overall, “Kevin’s choice” was better since it was nice and gooey and crispy on the outside. Kukuru’s one didn’t seem that as hot or gooey at all despite seemingly being made pretty fresh as well. Both good, but this one was the clear winner. After a long day and even after a nap, we were pretty tired and decided to just go back to the hotel. I wasn’t feeling that great and had no appetite so in the end i just sleep without having a real proper dinner this night which is too bad I guess.

The next morning I still wasn’t feeling that great but needed to get something into my stomach since the diarrhea that night was doing it’s thing. I remembered that we picked up some ‘interesting’ looking bun/burgers at the grocery store yesterday, like this ‘cheese burger’.

I opened up that bad boy to see what I was getting into, and behold the cheese burger in question, not so much as a small patty and some cheese like sauce I guess. Despite being mostly bread, I still ate that shit. lol. Mad lad.

Today was our first full day in Osaka and our first food of the day is this Donner sandwich place near/within Den Den town. The guy was making some kind of show or spectacle with ice cream or whatever, yea, not for me.

This Donner sandwich was pretty good, nice charcoal grill taste and kinda smoky. Good taste with the hot sauce/white sauce and some cabbage in the bottom. I think it was only like 500 yen I think? Pretty good deal.

We were still kinda hungry and right across the street from the Donner place was this chicken tender/panko friend chicken place, prime street food I guess.

They had a whole bunch of items and sizes but we ultimately ordered the Double size. You order from the vending machine on the left which is a bit unusual for street food I think. They have a lot of different sauces you can add on the chicken since it’s just basic fried.

And here is our bag of fried panko chicken, nice container.

Inside I already put in an assortment of seasonings such as curry powder, korean fried chicken sauce and some garlic mayo I think. I looks kinda messy and crazy but tastes pretty good.

We sat next to this sign on questionable makeshift tables that if you shifted your weight the wrong way the entire table could flip but yea, this sign looks so inviting. Kinda jokes how they ask the question “What is kino no tori kara?” in English but then everything else is in Japanese only lol, I mean what’s the point in having the question in English in the first place if your not going to provide an English answer lol.

After going around to alot of places in Osaka we found this 551 Horai place in a station, we decided to go for it since well, it’s far less crowded and busy than the main one on Dontonbori.

Despite being a small branch outpost, the lineup was still impressive. They had a whole bunch of combos and things you can buy but it seemed like everyone was ordering sets and group things so we decided to do the same. Gotta use some of that nice “kore kudasai” and pointing sometime you know.

And the kore kudasai and pointing was a great success. Mission accomplished. The set that we got had like 10 gyoza, 6 siu mai and 4 butamans or pork buns. Noice. I figure, we didn’t need to eat it all now, we could save it for breakfast or even late night snack at the hotel, which proved to be a very good idea in retrospect.

After walking a bit from the station and sitting in some random isolated corner where Tsutenkaku tower was with not very many people, we opened out our 551 Horai haul. Nice looking gyoza. They provide some packets of sweet soy sauce of them which are not pictured here. Pretty solid. I think I ate like 2 or 3 in this sitting, my sister had just 1 I think.

Next is our 6 siu mai. To be honest, while good, they weren’t the best things we have had, although they were better than the giant ones we had at Tsukiji market. They had nice packets of Japanese mustard that goes well with the dumplings, noice.

And here is the main event, our 4 butaman pork buns, the thing in which 551 is famous for and they are certainly presented very nicely vertically.

Such nice form and well shaped. Look how well if sits in my hand, noice.

The pork is and onion mixer is pretty damn good, savory and sweet with just the right amount of filling and bread ratio for a good bite each time. Good shit. I understand why this is 551 Horai’s top shit, good stuff. Would again. So yea. That is actually the last food item we had for our full day in Osaka lol. Well, it’s more like we were tired and didn’t want to try anything after going up tsutenkaku tower. It was late and we basically made a choice, find a place to eat or go up the tower, we chose poorly and went up the tower. By the time we got back down it was already pretty late, like 8 or 9pm I think for a Sunday evening, so not many places were open and the places that were, were kinda scary and non-tourist friendly. We thought for a moment of trying one of those angry man Kushikatsu chains which was close-by, but got spooked when all the signage was in Japanese and all of the patrons inside appeared to be locals as well, no foreigners or white people. So instead, still tired and my weakened state just went back to the hotel and ate the remaining 551 Horai stuff, the gyoza, siu mai and pork buns; of course with the help of the hotel microwave in the lobby. This was also the night where my sister went on her mini journey to find me diarrhea drugs since tomorrow would be a big day trip to Kyoto. Oh boy.

And here we are, after successfully getting to Kyoto in one piece, our first stop was Nishiki market, a popular food/fish market for locals and tourists. Once again, we can’t seem to resist the temptation of fried chicken on a stick.

I mean, this place isn’t even a fried chicken joint, it’s just a butcher or dude doing this on the side since he knows there are so many tourists that come by.

And the thing is that it works, we ended up buying some chicken too. Early morning first bite, fried chicken: wouldn’t have it any other way.

Nice ebi fry, one with salt and the other with tempura sauce. Good shit.

Besides of the sheer volume of people visiting the market and the food places, alot of the items are par-fried so that they cook quicker so that they can serve more people quicker. When I think about it and see this picture, should have got 3 items instead of just 2, it would have been a deal, doh.

Nice places to stand for all these nice booths for this store/location.

It think the makeshift tables are little barrels I think? Not bad. I can’t say the same thing about this guy on the right tho and his taste in bag accessories, duck plushie with hat and shirt? At least be Donald duck man.

I can’t remember how much this cost but it was grilled giant crab leg, very sweet and real. We put on some Shichimi-like seasoning and mayo topping, not bad. Good shit.

I like how each stall is so tourist friendly with the English and nice presentation, they know they are in a hot tourist spot after all.

I believe this was beef menchi katsu kushikatsu style. Pretty tasty. Yay. Even tho we got spooked from eating it yesterday, I guess you could say we did eat kushikatsu after all in Osaka/Kyoto. Yay.

On the street there is also specialty character stores, this one is inside a snoopy store and it had a nice snoopy taiyaki thing. I think my sister choose custard filling or something, not sure since one of the flavors she said they were sold out/didn’t have. I can’t recall if I had a bite of this but yea, it’s a thing.

Everywhere we go there is nice looking eel ready to be reheat and grilled to eat. Shortly after this we headed to Yasaka shrine.

Inside or rather, just past Yasaka shrine and heading into the park area is the standard festival food stalls, and out of nowhere, we see this nice fried chicken booth. God damn, we really can’t resist fried chicken can we? Especially since they have that nice KFC vs McDonalds illustrations at the front. Shiet.

Ah yes, the second cup of fried chicken we had today. We are sitting in some place not that far away from the washrooms in the park/shrine where there are also vending machines and such.

I probably forgot to take a picture but I also picked up some classic yakisoba from a booth. Oh yea, super bait festival food oh yea, good shit. Tastes not bad too.

After finishing up the yakisoba and the fried chicken, my sister decided to go back to the stalls since she saw something interesting. She came back with this cheese stick thing. It’s like fried spring roll wrappings but with stringly cheese inside, not bad. Pretty good.

Oh yea, after a day filled with heavy sightseeing, travel, walking, temple seeing and such, we went to Kyoto station to eat at this place known as Tsukumo Udon, Shiokoji Main Shop due to seeing a nice video on youtube. We are here, we did it.

Nice selection of menu offerings of all kinds of udon and tempura fare at reasonable pricces.

They certainly have quite alot of signage…oh look, do you see that? An english menu oh yea boi!

Yeeeaaa, english man. Noice, tourist friendly, not that we didn’t know that already but it’s always good to see upfront what’s on the menu. You order from a touch screen ticketing machine but the machine itself is only in Japanese so you kind of have to use some google translate a bit but it’s usually fine since there are pictures to get by, just need to use it for the confirmation buttons and such.

Once we got our ticket you hand it over to the person at the counter and then just wait for your order in a linear order. Nice people working and bags of shit, probably flour.

Wow, this place really doesn’t have alot of space to eat, they even have standing tables cause yea, no tables.

And here is the nice meal that we had been waiting for, that we went out of our way to go to Kyoto station for, Egg Curry Udon with Chicken Tempura! Comes with a nice small bowl of rice too.

I think this meal only cost like 800 yen or something and they are very generous with the chicken, 3 pieces of fried goodness. Yum.

We were fortunate to get a table at the back of the restaurant which is cool. I think if they don’t have enough spots they cut the line or force people to wait because it would suck if you get your meal and then you have no place to put it down to eat it. Noice white guy on the right, hay boi.

All in all it was worth coming here to Kyoto station for this curry udon meal at Tsukumo Udon. It was great, not just because it was huge and tasted great, but also because we saw it on youtube first and then we visited it, we lived a dream, a dream that can only be possible if your in Japan. Yea boi. We then left Kyoto back to Osaka with our day and belly fulfilled.

And in the next day, we ate curry again, because that’s the way we are, mad lads. Gotta try that Coco Ichiban curry you know, what better place than in Osaka in a chill day where we had plans but didn’t go through because we are dead tired. The diarrhea medicine worked yesterday, let’s see if it holds up for today as well.

Coming in at a relatively early time, I think it was just after 11:20am or so it was pretty empty. Just one or two people inside. You order from a tablet which is noice, the future is now you know, nice multilingual accessibility.

I believe my sister got beef curry chicken/pork cutlet (not sure) and crab creme croquettes with cheese as it can be seen. Quite a lot of food for the early morning first meal. I think her spice level was like 2 or 3? Not sure, no sweetness added.

I got regular pork curry sauce, special tonkatsu cutlet, normal chicken cutlet and sausages with an additional rice upgrade from 300g to 350g. I think I got spice level 5. Oh boy this was alot of food, I think both of us went a little overboard because of their free form ordering system where you just choose a base curry and then add more toppings if you like. I probably shouldn’t have gotten the extra rice upgrade or sausages.

Despite the large amounts of food we got, we both polished each of our meals off. Good shit. My sister here giving her two thumbs up of approval. Yea, Coco curry is probably the best curry experience around and good taste/customization that is unmatched. I like the little sweet pickled ginger/radish they give you as a side, it tastes pretty good and compliments the curry quite well. Good shit, would recommend. Level 5 spice is not too spicy for me but for those that can’t take spice, probably lower is better. The scale goes up to 10 so I wonder how strong level 10 would be in terms of spicy.

As our last full day in Osaka, we decided that we needed to have Okonomiyaki. We found this place in Dontonburi called Chibo a popular chain and it was a pretty big line but we made it inside, nice.

Being in Dontonburi, most of not all of the people in the line are tourists both domestic and international, you just can’t tell sometimes.

Wow, once again, at the front we had brown people helping people order in advance and inside we see brown people helping cook the okonomiyaki as-well. Wow, this restaurant is so equitable, or rather, they want to get the cheapest labor possible, yea.

I see that they have their own branded chopsticks. noice. Nice plate too.

As our okonomiyaki arrives, the server asks us if we want to put nori and bonito flakes, mayo etc we nod, yep, shit looks good. I can’t entirely remember the differences between the two, I think mine is the green onion one and it had egg, meat and some jelly stuff called the “Dontonburi Special” I think my sister’s one was either called “Osaka Special” or “Classic” I forgot, I’m sure a quick check on a website of Chibo can find out for sure.

As it can be seen, we have two okonomiyaki, one for each of us, the table besides us just had one for two people, two women if I can remember. We be hungry fat bitches, eat all the pancakes yo. It might go without saying but we ended up putting more mayo and sauce on ours as we cut up the pieces since we like dat mayo yo.

Nice and clean hotplate, yea, we cleaned that shit up. And that wraps up the last full meal we had in Osaka, tomorrow we are heading back to Tokyo and Akihabara.

In the morning at Shin Osaka station, we made sure to arrive extra early before our train was supposed to come and we waited for that shit. We made sure to not repeat the same mistakes twice while coming here. We had the leisure of walking around the shinkansen station and checking out what kind of ekibens or meals they had.

Since we were leaving in the morning, we decided to not get ekiben this time around, considering that it was so early. But we did end up getting some combeni foods and sandwiches cause yea, why not. This Miso Pork Cutlet sando was pretty solid, better than some other ones I’ve had. Eating on the shinkansen was alot more enjoyable when everything goes smoothly and there is no trauma involved in your transportation day.

Once we got back to Akihabara in another hotel, and got settled in and did our usual crane game/ Akihabara shopping run, we decided to go to 8th floor of Yodobashi for some nice lunch eats.

We chose a nice looking restaurant that kinda specializes in pub food and tempura/sashimi. Nice tourist friendly menu, that’s what I like to see boi.

We were feeling like tempura, since we really didn’t have anything tempura stand alone outside of our sushi ebi fris and the one off ebi street food stand in Kyoto. Tempura rice bowl looks good.

The setting of this place looks nice, like a pub or side street but not really, you would never really know that this was inside a department store along with a whole bunch of other food places.

My sister got the tempura rice bowl and udon set meal. Looks good with a wide assortment of other side dishes and such. Good value it seems.

I got the Special tempura rice bowl which is a bit larger than normal and comes with tempura eel and couple of other fried items that are extra. Comes with miso soup too and small side of some shit.

It’s hard to tell but there is rice underneath there. Fully seasoned with tempura sauce, they don’t allow you to put any more sauce on, you don’t really need it.

While we were eating a small group of youth boys came in with their school uniforms. Makes me wonder why they are here in Akihabara, either for a school trip, skipping school or some other shit. Who knows, maybe their school is nearby or school ended early. The mystery is endless. When we had this meal, I think it was past noon already, like between 1pm and 2pm so definitely not rush time.

For dinner on our return to Akihabara and Tokyo, we went to a place called Steak Lodge I believe which has several locations in Tokyo which just so happens to also be on the 8th floor of Yodobashi Camera. After stumbling with google translate a bit, we asked for a “eigo menyu, kudasai” and the sever was like, ah, “ok”.

Hmm, even with google translate, it always helps to see everything at once, since so many things like combos and sets/options are hard to translate relational. I believe I got the 500g combo “Juicy & Outside Skirt” set. I also asked for a Mountain Set A, with rice and miso soup.

And here is my pile of meat of juicy and outside skirt steak. yea, for the price 2760yen, this is not bad, certainly quite a volume. It’s not entirely sure what “juicy” steak that cut of meat is, even using the English menu but I think it was pretty good. The skirt as expected, a bit more tough but more beefy flavor.

I can’t remember what my sister got but it wasn’t a combo one, I think it was just 200g or 300g of meat. You have an options of kind of sides I think, hence the mashed potato. I wasn’t sure if we needed the rice but after eating the steak, I’m glad I did because you need to have something to eat to absorb all the juices and sauces to counter the richness of the meat, it was good and I think we ended up eating most of it.

The final bill for both of us was just under 5000 yen, not bad for steak dinner. At the Keg in Canada, this would be the price for one classic steak dinner, although honestly, I still prefer western style steaks since they are aged and seasoned better imo. Having steak on a hotplate is a nice novelty which is a different experience specifically when they give you several types of sauces to choose from to keep it interesting.

Always looking for a nice sweet post dinner treat, this ice cream place beside our old hotel at Akihabara Station was on the way back.

Looking happy there. The ice cream itself was solid she says, probably would have been better if it was hokkaido milk or something yea.

I can’t exactly remember how we got here but I think my sister was still hungry and ended up trying to fulfill her mission of trying all of the main combeni fried chicken offerings. This last stop was from Lawson.

I think the gimmick of this one was that the chicken nuggets were supposed to have cheese inside them? I had one and it was kinda shit, tastes so processed and fake, yea, not good, could hardly tell it was even chicken. A bad one here.

She also got this one which I think is there’s special spicy chicken one, which funnily enough, doesn’t taste spicy, but is actually pretty damn good lol. Almost tastes like KFC or Popeyes, or something in between them. Not bad.

We got these little Naniwa cup mugs at Shin Osaka station that act as a joke ass souvenir but also has some kind of pudding inside.

The one that I got was this blue one that has chocolate and vanilla I think. The pudding itself was frozen and the directions say something like, eat within 7 hours or so to defrost. So yea, that’s what I did, well I did put it into the mini fridge first so yea, it was cool. Nice vessel.

Alright as our last full day in Tokyo/Akihabara we decided to mix thing up by going to Shogun burger, nested away in some floor of a commercial office building. They offer Wagyu burgers, ok, we there.

Ordering from the machine was a bit painful since it was not in English and they had no back button for some reason. I ended up ordering a combo with fries/unlimited soda drink but because we messed up, we only ordered the burger for my sister. Whoops. It’s ok I shared my fries. I also ordered a small side of ‘chili dipping sauce’ if you can see on the top right, not bad.

The burger itself is pretty damn good but I must say that I could hardly tell if there was wagyu beef in it at all. It’s one of those things I guess where wagyu is great but it may not be the best thing if you use it in a burger mixed with other cuts of beef too. That tomato so red.

Yum, the cheese and double patties meld into each other pretty well. The cost of these burgers isn’t cheap, I think each one is appropriately 2000 yen, but then again who cares, it’s our last full day in Japan, might as well try to eat like kings. Yea boi.

After Shogun burger me and my sister went and did our own things. I happened to stumble across this nice fresh orange juice machine. I’ve seen this before but since I haven’t actually had ‘real’ orange juice for such a long time in Japan, I decided to give it a try.

For 500 yen a cup, they certainly put on a nice machine show with the oranges falling down and squeezing into the cup. Nice container.

The amount of juice however is a bit disappointing, roughly just half the full cup. I think this is normal now that I look at the pictures on the machine but at the time I felt scammed. 500yen for half a cup of juice, I mean it was pretty good orange juice yes, but that 500 yen could have been used for more gacha or crane games! Ah well.

At last our final dinner in Japan will be yakiniku at Gyu Kaku, a well known yakiniku chain across japan. Pretty nice atmosphere and vibe.

Their system is kind of confusing and once again we had to do the “eigo menyuu, kudasai” to get the full picture of options but once we got the idea, it made sense. Once you select your course/option for all you can eat set, they give you your receipt/order with a QR code that you have to scan with your phone and go to the website to order items.

Once you are seated however they give you some beef tongue and cabbage to tie you over before you get started and ordering stuff.

They gave this little cup filled with ice that I am guessing is used to help put out fire if it occurs. I am not so sure about this advice and technique. We luckily did not need to use this.

I ordered some kimchee and spicy beansprouts, yea boi, just like kbbq/gyubee at homeeee!

Chicken thigh meat, gotta put that shit on for a long time, since it needs a long time.

More stuff on the grill always looks good. My sister ordered some sweet potatoes in butter or something, taking up more room which could have been used for more meat.

Woo, now we grilling now, see that smoke, gotta put some of that nice cabbage to put out dem fires.

This bimbimbap I ordered was delicious, very different from what I am used to, everything about it tastes great even the rice which I think they season it with something to make it taste better I have no idea but it was good shit.

Our table begins to get croweded with cooked meats, raw meats and everything else in-between.

This was a more premium cut of beef that came as a big steak, I had to cut it up into chunks with scissors once it was grilled and placed it into this garlic butter tray. It was really good shit.

Slices of I think honey pepper kalbi, really tasty. I think I ordered this kind of meat like twice, maybe three times. Good shit.

The nice English menu offerings which is nice to have. We got the Gyu-Kaku course which is 3938 yen per person and is considered the middle tier of all you can eat yakiniku course.

I must say, the menu they provide is pretty comprehensive, although I didn’t’ really read it once I realized you order from your own phone.

On the left you can see the other tiers of courses that you can get. We got the Gyu-Kaku course which is recommened, but if you are feeling cheaper you can get the 70-course set which honestly, it not worth it, since it’s only 700yen cheaper than Gyu-Kaku course. Not sure what’s on the Tanno higher tier course other than that there are an additional 10 items.

Being that you order on your own phone, I took the liberty of taking several screenshots of the order history and what we ordered over the course of our time at Gyu-Kaku.

You only have like 70minutes to order all the stuff you want to eat and have 90 minutes to eat everything, which kind of sucks for us because by the time we learned how to order and sent our orders in via the phone system, 10-15 minutes had already passed by. Doh. Based on the menu, I didn’t know they had so many different kinds of kalbi in different cuts and styles/marinates, certainly tastes all good tho for sure.

A few samples of the screens to order from. They were promoting this thing called Endless Kalbi recommended to be eaten with kimchi and this rice/seaweed bowl. Because of this I think, they ran out of kimchi halfway. Yea, ran out of kimchee, wow, their kimchi was pretty good shit too, I was a bit sad that they ran out.

Before you know it, our time was up and our bellies filled with delicious grilled meat of all sorts that I can’t even remember but mainly beef kalbi I think. That grill and exhaust certainly is something for sure.

It was not that busy since it was past normal dinner hours but still a decent amount of people, mostly local but I think a couple of tables were at least tourists since I could hear some English spoken.

Once again paying is simple, just press ask for bill/checkout on your phone and your bill is ready to be paid at the front by the machine/person who is attending it there. For just under 8000 yen we had a great last yakiniku grilled meat dinner in Japan, definitely worth it, or any yakiniku place for that matter in japan.

At the airport we decided to go have some katsudon cause we didn’t have untill now, better now than never I guess.

The restaurant itself in the airport was pretty nice, open air really and obviously tourist friendly, it’s an airport after all. Pretty expensive however that’s for sure.

Here is our nice katsudon meal set, pretty nice and solid. Good shit.

Our side order of fried oysters and a croquette. Good shit.

Close up view of the don. I can’t remember what the name of the restaurant was, I’m sure I have a photo somewhere, I mean, it’s not that hard to figure out; it’s the tonkatsu restaurant in Narita Airport, you can’t really miss that one, you can find the name eventually.

On our direct flight to Toronto we got served two meals, this was our ‘dinner’ which we didn’t really have much of a choice since we were seated at the back of the plane, by the time they came to serve us, they only had one option left anyways lol. This was beef stew/hamburger steak I think? It was ok, nothing special. The only thing good here was the apple pastry thing on the top left, pretty good.

The last meal we were served on the plane was breakfast, and it was the same situation again, cause we at the back, no more options, we get this so called hot oatmeal with fruits. It was more like bread pudding but whatever, I didn’t’ finish this shit, I ate all the fruits however. And yea, that was our last plane meal of the trip. Bah.

Well then, at the end of it all, it was a great food eating trip overall from start to finish. Although I must admit there were a few times/days which were lost opportunities for good meals due to a number of circumstances, either due to time, travel, tiredness or simply my poor condition/lack of good availability. I knew this might happen so it’s OK, we ended up eating all if not most of the things/places we wanted to eat and then some. If there were a few food regrets that I have, is that I wish that I was in better health at the start of Osaka and that we had better food plans for those first two days because man, Osaka is all about eating and we didn’t really get it all done until that last Osaka day, ah well.

I also noticed that we ate alot of sushi in the first half of the trip, we probably should have spread it out a bit more in and saved one of the sushi days for the ladder half, we didn’t’ eat any sushi at all after we left for Osaka lol, ah-well. I can’t say for sure what was the best meal but the most memorable ones for me at least was Tsukumo Udon at Kyoto Station, Uobei “Peter Barakan” Sushi in Shibuya, Yakiniku Like in Asakusa and our final meal Gyu-Kaku in Akihabara, although all sit down meals were memorable.

Overall good shit, would go back to Japan just to eat again, and I will again the next time for sure with more places and plans in mind.

And that ends Food Journey II, not sure what I will recap next, maybe merch summary, choice ace photos or maybe just photos of humans/akihabara, well see.