Chefie’s World

I haven’t posted for the past week due to my recent vacation in Japan. Oh! This was one of my best. With the complete family in tow, together with my favorite aunt and her friend, we all enjoyed it tremendously. The next few posts will be an account of the fun experience we all had.

I had such a busy three days before this trip. I was in Davao for five days to take care of the legacy buffet of a batch there. I left last Friday on a delayed Cebu Pacific flight – three hours and the worst was when we got here, the plane’s doors would not open! The following day, Saturday, I had a class and looked into another legacy buffet preparation which was for the next day, Sunday. Then I felt I was getting sick and had to make an urgent call to my ENT who suggested I start taking some antibiotics since I was also leaving the next day.

Going to the airport and checking in was fine except that we only had a few minutes before boarding. After a four hour stay in the plane, we landed in Kansai Airport which was in Osaka. I used to a few hours in this airport before boarding a flight for the States or back to Manila.

The minute we got out of immigration, our suitcases were in the carousel ready to be taken. I suggested to everyone that I go ahead with customs since I was the only one with a different family name. Once the customs officer knew that I was from Manila, he started speaking Tagalog, asking me, kung may dala akong marijuana, shabu o cocaine. I answered with great surprise, “Wala, ang dala ko ang aking buong pamilya, mag vacation kami dito sa Japan.” Then he stared and looked daze. Apparently, his Tagalog, was a memorized question. Harhar! Then I started chatting and chatting in our native language so he let me go. As soon as the main gate was opened, I felt the hunger, when the guide told us that we were going on a bus ride to Kyoto for two hours, I felt more hunger. You know that I have one phobia. I don’t know if it has a name. I get scared when I get hungry and there’s no food around. My family always had food somewhere. So off I go to guess where? Starbucks Japan, the first café I see outside the airport. I got a few deli sandwiches and my favorite, iced latte! Ok na yan since I am very sure we will all eat again when we get to Kyoto. It was cold! Spring weather was almost 5ºC. I ate my sandwich which had a wasabi flavored mayo smothered on the ham and cheese, very Japanese. I enjoyed the very moist bread which was evident in all the sandwiches I had there.

We stayed in Kyoto Royal Hotel and Spa which was a pretty, clean and very cozy type of hotel. As told, we were all hungry. Everyone decided to go on their own for the midnight snack. I had my sister, Cynthia with me and we couldn’t decide which resto to go to. There was no translation to English in any of the names or menus in the restaurants. So guess, where we had our snack? The Japanese reliable fast food place…Yoshinoya… and guess who was there? All of my family eating beef gyudon, except for Sarah and Joey who took braveness and power to eat in one of the Japanese no translation type of restaurant. Heheh! Here I got to use a lot of my pointing skills with my hands and my lips or should I say “nguso.” Pinoy na pinoy! After dinner, I decided to explore the most important place next to a restaurant, which was a grocery or a convenient store. Here is what I bought:

It’s a four-packed desserts or sweet snacks. One is shaped like a wheel and had several layers of cake just like an Indonesian steamed cake. There’s a pound cake with heavy liquor and candied fruits on it. Another is a tuile shaped into a cigar ( Japanese barquillos ) and some red bean mochi. I noticed that convenient stores in Kyoto are well equipped with food – a lot of traditional ones including desserts. They had tons of maki, sushi and the flavored rice shaped into a rectangle or ball. They even had an assortment of puddings, cheesecakes, cream puffs and chocolates, all ready to eat and had a shelf life of two weeks. As soon as I got out of the store, it rained. Hala! And it was getting colder. Cynthia and I decided to buy an umbrella, not too expensive, and then ran to our hotel.

• In Search of Royce’s Chocolate
• My good friends…
• Strawberries in Kyoto
• Tsukiji Market
• For now…

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 9:28 pm and is filed under japan, personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.