foodie saturday

Since we didn't get to go during O-bon, we decided to visit the graves of Satoshi's mother's family and a friend of their family, today. (We'll probably visit Satoshi's father's family grave a little later.) We travelled to Shiga prefecture. It is about an hour and a half by train from Osaka.

Since we left kind of early in the morning, I made us some pastrami sandwiches (don't worry there IS pastrami in there!) for breakfast. (Yesterday, I was feeling ambitious and made more rolls, this time putting Italian seasoning as I kneaded the bread. It came out really good!)

It was a very nice SUNNY day and of course the humidity made it dreadful! The first grave that we went to was in Nagahama. The taxi driver was kind enough to turn off the meter while we went to clean the grave and say a prayer. There was even this cute little guy on the gravestone.

At the Nagahama station, we were able to check out the S.L. North Lake Biwa train, S.L. stands for steam locomotive. It was exciting to see a running coal fueled steam engine! (actually the first time for me!)


Except, look at all that pollution coming out! eew!

From Nagahama, we caught the train and went a couple of stations over to Hikone. There we visited a couple more graves and said a few more prayers.







There was a REALLY old fire "engine" in the entryway of the temple!

After saying our prayers, we walked to a cafe called Club Harie, they belong to the same company as Taneya which I posted about here and are known for their baum kuchen (a round cake that looks like the rings of a tree.

As soon as you are seated they bring you these lovely truffles.

I ordered the "cake set"--two cakes of my choice from the showcase plus a drink of my choice. Here's what I chose: Tropique--a chocolate mousse with a yellow spong cake layer and lots of tropical fruits on top. Cassis and Tea--A black currant mousse with a thin layer of cake and an earl grey flavored truffle in the center. The hot pink color was nice too! Amazingly, both of these weren't too sweet!

Satoshi had the mango ice cream, which came with these thin butter cookies.

It was a long day, but we enjoyed ourselves and did our part to uphold family traditions.

Hope you are having a great weekend!