Gastronomy 101

Our seventh day dawned with the pressing need for me to use the internet. I had some financial/work things to check on. We located an internet cafe at the top of a record store that had the advantage of letting you use the internet for free for an hour so long as you order something. So we sat down and ordered some French toast for breakfast. What we got was this: This is probably the most decadent breakfast I've ever had. It's French toast piled with ice cream and drizzled with honey and powdered sugar and candied nuts. Yikes! It was really good though. And vacation has special rules about what you can eat. The rules are: you can eat anything. Vacation food has no calories and lots of nutritional value, no matter what it is. Plus, it was necessary to get the internet. Having satisfied myself that I still had money in the bank and nothing had exploded at work, I was ready to move on and walk off some of that French toast. And we commenced walking and shopping - for hours and ho...

Well, this day was a little lacking in pictures and experience because we spent a lot of it on the train, but I did get some good pictures of our dinner. Day 6, we made our way back to Tokyo by train, ready for the next phase of our journey. Our last days in Tokyo would be spent in areas of a different pace. We would be staying in Shibuya and making the rounds through the crazy shopping of Shibuya, the crazy nightlife of Shinjuku, the crazy fashion of Harajuku and the crazy architecture of Aoyama. Our first day, we explored our neighborhood. Only a few minutes walk from our hotel was the famous Shibuya crossing. The busiest intersection in the world. This is Jason with Hachiko the dog. Hachiko was a real dog once, who used to accompany his master every day to the train station here and then come back to wait for him every evening. Hachiko's master was a professor and one day at work he got ill and he died wthout returning home. After Hachiko's master died, the dog continued to...

We were on Miyajima Island for two days. The second day I managed to take rather more food pictures so those of you who came here because you were told this is is some kind of food blog-- as opposed to the majority of readers, who are related to me by blood, marriage or friendship--will have something to look at. But first. Monkeys! We got up the second morning and undaunted by the looming clouds in the sky, hiked the 10 minutes ("7 if run a little" we were told by the sign) up to the ropeway that would take us partway up the nearby mountain. As we emerged from the ropeway station, we were greeted by several warning signs. My excitement about seeing the monkeys gave way to trepidation. What kind of creatures were these? We were warned of thievery and greed and gluttony ("but we are not interested in your camera" - the warning sign monkeys helpfully proclaimed). We stashed our backpacks safely away and ventured out carefully. "WE DO NOT LIKE TO BE STARED AT OUR ...

Dudes. So when I said I was recovering from my illness, I was wrong. One case of laryngitis, one round of powerful antibiotics, and one sleepless night tripping out on devil-spawned cough medicine later and I think now I can say I am recovering. I have my voice mostly back and the illness has retreated to an irritating cough, so now I can resume my interrupted travelogue. On this day, we left Tokyo and headed out for an interlude on Miyajima Island, a small island near to Hiroshima. On the first day there actually wasn't much food photography. We had breakfast at Caffe Excelsior again, and I was so in awe of our first night fabulous multi-course dinner that I didn't take pictures. I figured I would just take pictures the second night. But on the second night I realized they had come up with completely new dishes for us to eat. I was not expecting that. What I did take pictures of was lunch. We got to buy our lunch from the train station, which, when you are a tourist, is reall...