This
morning we returned to Little Mermaid underneath Koenji station for a
spot of breakfast. A hot dog sausage drizzled with cheese and onion
encased in a golden pastry certainly hot the spot. To satisfy my sweet
tooth a chocolate filled horn pastry.
We
needed to check out of the Koenji Guesthouse by 10am so we packed our
cases, left a thank you note for the hosts and stored our cases in
luggage lockers at the station.
On our final day in Tokyo we wanted to take it easy so we slowly explored the shops around Koenji.
Nah, it was too small!
We'd read about a vegan restaurant in Koenji called Meu Nota.
It was full when we first arrived but the owner kindly reserved us a
table for later in the afternoon. When we returned we enjoyed this 30 ingredient taco
rice for ¥980 (£6.60). A stack of rice was topped with spiced bean mince
and surrounded by salad and corn chips.
If
you ordered a main meal you could get a coffee at the same time for ¥50
(33p) and a desert for ¥100 (66p). We took advantage of both offers,
the desert was a rather nice vegan creme brulee.
Having
walked our lunch off around the streets of Koenji we collected our
cases and headed to the station. We were staying in Narita
tonight so we would be closer to the airport for our morning flight.
We
picked up some food in Shinjuku to eat on the Narita Express. Born in
Hokkaido these baked cheese tarts are crispy, rich and fluffy inside.
They cost ¥300 (£2) each and are gorgeous.
I
was surprised to find what looked like Scotch eggs in a
supermarket so I bought some for the train journey. Rich and creamy eggs
encased in pork katsu, I love scotch eggs but these were far nicer.
Milky mochi balls that perfectly captured the Milky flavour.
Our
home for our final night in Japan was the top floor of U-city Hotel in
Narita. A double room here cost us ¥5600 (£37.50) for one night. The
hotel offered an airport transfer for guests and the airport was just 20
minutes drive away.
Close to the hotel was a 7 Eleven, ideal as we planned on eating back in the hotel room.
Fried
chicken, rice and pickles costing ¥450 (£3) was my evening meal. Over a
can of Sapporo we reflected on our time in Japan before getting some
sleep as we had to be up early for our flight in the morning.
At
precisely 12.01am my wife woke me up to inform me that there was an
earthquake which had started a few minutes ago. The building was swaying quite intensely so we quickly got
dressed. It lasted a couple of minutes and eventually stopped, no
announcement was made over the speakers to evacuate so we went back to
sleep again. I looked
it up on Twitter and discovered a 6.3 magnitude
earthquake had struck off the East coast close to Iwaki.
The next morning...
The next morning...
At
Narita Airport I spent the last of my yen on this chicken tempura ramen
for breakfast. Costing ¥1050 (£7) it was definitely the best food I'd ever
experienced at an airport! Chicken breast in a golden tempura batter
served with soba noodles, egg and spring onions in a rich broth. A
thoroughly delicious end to an incredible 3 week adventure in Japan!
Cheers for this latest epic food adventure...looking forward to the next one!
ReplyDeleteAlways fascinating, thanks for taking the time.
ReplyDeleteThis was great, shame the next one isn't until 2019 ! Someone should pay you to travel the world eating strange food.
ReplyDeleteI’d be well up for that! There will be a couple of Food Adventures next year in Slovenia and Portugal 😊
DeleteGreat can't wait. Get vice magazine to pay for it
ReplyDeleteDon't know which bit of Portugal you have in mind but you reminded me of a former boss who used to take the same holiday each year, one week touring the far north of Portugal and the second week across the border in Galicia. His wife didn't care too much for the extreme heat, so I think it was some kind of compromise. If you get down to Lisbon, don't forget to get outside of some Ginjinha!
ReplyDelete