So aside from craving all the Japanese food to be had in Japan, I landed in Narita with an odd desire for SPAM Musubi and Loco Moco. And what do you know – in Shibuya, there’s a branch of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue. (In actuality, I ran across three separate Hawaiian restaurants in the Shibuya/Ometesando/Harajuku corridor alone).

So I stopped by for a plate lunch.

L&L Hawaiian facade – right next to Tokyu Hands (best store in the world)

SPAM – with pictured musubi on the label

Interior shot

Loco Moco and No Reservations on the iPad

SPAM Musubi

So was it any good? Well, I’m not sure good is the right word for it. A Hawaiian plate lunch, by nature, is salty, filling comfort food. For example, the loco moco I ordered is a hamburger patty, covered in gravy and sunny side up eggs served over rice. Its bachelor chow. Tasty – but I’m not sure other people would really enjoy it. Maybe Hawaiians and Hawaiian obsessed Japanese. As for me, I did enjoy it, but I think that’s partially because I was tuned into Hawaii after watching half of season 2 of Hawaii Five-0 AND the No Reservations episode.

L&L Hawaiian BBQ
Japan
Shibuya (Tokyo, Japan)
12-12 Udagawa-cho
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0042 Japan
Phone: +81-3-3476-1941
Next to Tokyu Hands

First off, Tokyo. Returned to my favorite ramen place in the entire world, So Kan To.

I don’t think I really need to talk again about the attention to detail to making a simple pork broth noodle soup – I mean there’s entire movies which state it more eloquently than I can in my simple blog. But the pork toru buta ramen is reason enough to move to Tokyo.

Of course, some katsu-don was eaten.

Cyndi Lauper is coming! (to Japan)

It was SNOWING in Tokyo

Then we headed up to Nagano – Hakuba where it was snowing even more!

Evan at lunch

The water was delicious.

The Japanese face mask – very useful when it was snowing.

Then we had some yakitori – which was amazing

And then the second night, we had an amazing chanko-nabe meal. That’s right sumo wrestler food. This was so unbelievably tasty, and yet an under-represented portion of Japanese cuisine. I mean I had only heard of it via Tony Bourdain’s book – but I’ve never seen a chanko-nabe restaurant outside of Japan, but now I’ll be on the look-out. It’s basically Japanese hot-pot, with a heavy focus on vegetables, chicken and more vegetables. Then the post-cooking broth is used to make soba and the diner finishes off with a big bowl of soba noodles. During a sumo tournament, wrestlers only eat it with chicken, but since neither Evan nor I were in line to complete in a sumo tournament, there were also pork meatballs.

More snow.

A return to Tokyo meant a return to Hina Sushi as well as Komen for more ramen.

Not really a whole lot of conclusions to draw except how much I enjoy Japan!

Shibuya is famous for its scramble crossing. It is located in front of the Shibuya Station Hachiko exit and stops vehicles in all directions to allow pedestrians to inundate the entire intersection. Three large TV screens mounted on nearby buildings overlook the crossing. The Starbucks store overlooking the crossing is also one of the busiest in the world

Here’s the crossing from ground level:

With the recent Chinese New Year holiday going on for 8 days this year, my friends and I decided to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit festivities by getting the heck out of China and off to Japan for some days on the slopes and a few days in the capital.

When I used to live in Hong Kong, I used to go up to Nagano and Hokkaido for snowboarding almost every year. And usually our mountain of choice was Happo-one (pronounced “Oh-nay” not “one”)

This year, however, we chose to go to Nozawa Onsen, which is also in the Nagano area staying at wonderful Jonobi Hotel..

Nozawa-onsen and the surrounding ski area were not quite as big and expansive as Happo-one, but the town was much much cooler with many public onsens (baths) on the streets (for free!) as well as a great little bar street, shops selling local pickles and fruit compote – compared with Happo’s, well, nothing.

And the snowboarding? Couldn’t have been better. Here’s some photos:

This is the villagers only outdoor public onsen.

Having dinner with friends Evan and Colin

Look at the sun and the snow! Conditions were PERFECT!

Snowboarding PIKACHU!

View over Nozawa-onsen.

Sunny day!

Back in Tokyo, I just did the usual thing – shopping in Omotesando and Shibuya. Eating. But we also stayed in the super cool Hotel CLASKA which was the Wallpaper* 2004 Hotel of the Year.

Shibuya Crossing

Hina Sushi at Shibuya Seibu

@Shibuya Seibu by [Terence], on Flickr”>@Shibuya Seibu” />

Breakfast at Hotel CLASKA

@ Hotel CLASKA by [Terence], on Flickr”>@ Hotel CLASKA” />

The rest of the photos are here

Note: the blog title post refers to the ironic theme song of the trip.

in shanghai, there’s a tonkatsu place located behind jing’an temple. i am part of this lunch group that meets on a semi-regular basis to, well, eat. on wednesday of this week we went to this tonkatsu place.

????
Bang Qi Pork Chop
??????176?(?????)
Jing an district, Jiao Zhou Road No. 176, Near Beijing West Road

here’s the review on dianping.com (which is china’s answer to yelp, but for restuarants only)

they served about 10 different types of tonkatsu, depending on if you liked curry, or lean or more fatty. i chose the curry.

image from a temple in nara, japan