lunar new year

Went to Chinatown in Yokohama yesterday 

It was quite empty because I've heard that the Chinese were told not to visit Japan...
 

I wanted to check out Ryuuka a tiny market...

I've been looking for Hoisin sauce...620 yen (tax included) and they have it! hope to get the other ingredients together so that I can make Hoisin sauce chicken

This restaurant was in the J-drama, "119 Emergency Call"

I was also looking for lup cheong...there was one shop that was selling imported lup cheong from the US, but they were selling it for $29!

Instead I bought this Taiwan brand from Sakamoto (forgot to take a photo of the store front)...650 yen (tax included)

I hope this will be similar to the lup cheong flavor that I grew up with...

Hoping the Year of the Horse will be a good one for everyone

Ryuuka

136-13 Yamashitacho

Naka ward, Yokohama, Kanagawa

Hours: 9:30-21:00

*cash only

Sakamoto

190 Yamashitacho

Naka ward, Yokohama, Kanagawa

Closed Wednesdays & Thursdays

Hours: 11:00-18:00

*cash only

nian gao

Lucky to find nian gao at Tokyo Doujiang Seikatsu…350 yen (tax included)

(In Japanese, they pronounce it "nengao")

They had two types, one with adzuki bean and one with black sugar

I chose the one with black sugar

It also came with instructions on how to eat it...

• zap in the microwave for 10 to 20 seconds 
• steam 
• fry in a pan 
• wrap in puff pastry and toast 
• wrap in spring roll wrapper and fry

My mom used to make her own gau, and it used to be super sticky...if you didn't wrap it properly mold would take over...

This one was firm and easily came out of the aluminum pan.

Hope to try frying it in a pan and zapping in the microwave.

Not as sweet as my mom's version, glad I got to try this one.

happy lunar new year

Hope you have a Happy Lunar New Year!

Apparently it is the Year of the Wood Snake

I wanted to check out Yokohama’s Chinatown, since the last time I went for Lunar New Year was pre-pandemic, but since I just got vaccinated and heard that 90 million?! Chinese are traveling this week, and that their number one travel destination is Japan, I decided to lay low.

I instead bought us Chinese bento from Niihao...680 yen (plus tax)

1 main choice...I chose sweet sour pork, 2 side choices...I chose happosai (eight treasure vegetables) and eggplant gyoza (this was eggplant and minced meat that was deep fried, I think the sauce was the sweet sour sauce...1 starch choice, I chose their noodles since I read somewhere that noodles should be eaten for the New Year.

I also bought some spring rolls at the market since this should also be eaten for the New Year and also just in case this bento wasn't enough for Satoshi...for his main I chose ebi chili (spicy shrimp)

I ate my bento for lunch, but Satoshi will eat his for dinner. (Kat will eat leftovers for dinner)

I hope the New Year will bring you good health, happiness and prosperity.

happy lunar new year

Happy Lunar New Year!

We went to Yokohama's Chinatown on Saturday to celebrate.

It is only a 30 minute ride by train from where we live.

We started off with some happo tea and snacks at Gokuchaso (which apparently translates to Monkey Magic Tea House).

Happo tea has eight different dried items like goji berries, chrysanthemum as well as some tea too.

It was pretty nice to sit and leisurely drink tea without too much chattering going on in the cafe.

I ordered an amanikuman which was a bun filled with housemade char siu.

Not too sweet and the steamed bun was really soft!

I would definitely get this again.

Satoshi ordered the char siu with white scallion bowl.

I've notice this combination is popular in the Kanto (East Japan) area.

Top the bowl with a raw egg and add more seasoning if you wish with soy sauce or chili sauce.

Satoshi said he enjoyed this.

After several pots of tea, we went kitty corner to the Masobyo Temple which in Chinese is the Ma Zhu Miao Temple.

Apparently this is the temple for the Sea Goddess Mazu.

We didn't realize we need to pay to visit this temple, so after looking around a bit, we left.

Lunch was at Ryuhoshuka.

Satoshi ordered these shrimp gyoza which turned out to be har gow.

They were delicious.

We also ordered this zuwaigani (snow crab) fried rice.

This was rich and delicious!

Lots of douchi (black bean) sauce.

I wanted to order the paiko fried rice...paiko is written páigǔ in Chinese and is a kind of spare rib, but they had run out of it, so instead I ordered the short rib donabe gohan which was a garlicky rice dish cooked with short ribs in a clay pot.

This was delicious, especially the parts that were stuck to the pot.

We ate a lot of rice that day but everything had different flavors and were delicious.

There are other places we want to check out so we'll be back to Yokohama's Chinatown.

Gokuchaso
130 Yamashitacho
Naka-ku, Yokohama
Phone: 045.681.7776
Hours: Mondays-Fridays 11:30-20:00, Saturdays 11:00-21:00, Sundays 11:00-20:00

Ryuhoshuka
152 Yamashitacho
Naka-ku, Yokohama
Phone: 045.662.9201
Closed Tuesdays
Hours: 11:30-14:30 (lunch), 17:30-21:00 (dinner)

blood moon

Did you get to see the blood moon? We did.

Before that though...there was a beautiful sunset.

Satoshi and I had dinner at Amaranti.

We had dinner here before.

He ordered a glass of wine, I think 700 yen for this was a rip-off.

I think their portions of food got noticeably less while their prices have gone up...I don't think we'll be back here.

At least we got to see the blood moon.

shisen ramen

Did you get to see the lunar eclipse the other night? We were lucky.

At first we thought it was gonna be a bust because there were lots of clouds, but by the time the eclipse started, it cleared up and we could see it right overhead from our lanai...

If I thought Friday's temps were cool, Saturday's were closer to freezing.

Since Satoshi had his language class in the afternoon, we headed to Umeda for lunch.

I had spicy on my mind.

We decided to try Shisen Ramen. Shisen is the word in Japanese for Szechuan.

Satoshi tried their curry tan tan men, I didn't try their broth but it looked and smelled wonderful with some star anise.

To cool off your mouth, a frozen lychee. Satoshi said this was good (he didn't share).

Satoshi also liked their gyoza.

I went with their Mabo Tofu. When the lady brought out my dish, she walked very gingerly with it. My first thought was, "couldn't you have put it in a bigger bowl?!"...the spices hit you immediately, make you cough a little but it's hard to put your spoon down.

The tofu was on the firm side and the sauce thick and rich. Even if it may look like there wasn't enough rice, there was a lot underneath.

Check out all the condiments and spices on the table... among them there was lychee vinegar, tsatsai, garlic chips, chili powder, szechuan pepper.

I was impressed with their ra-yu (chili oil) stock...shelves and shelves of the stuff in different stages.

A great way to warm up on a cold day...we'll be back.

Shisen Ramen
Sanbangai (North area) B2
Umeda, Osaka
Phone: 06.6485.0132

gesshoku

Last night, we were able to catch the ending of the lunar eclipse from our lanai. (It was really cloudy, so we missed the beginning.)

In Japanese, lunar eclipse is called gesshoku. The chinese characters are tsuki (moon) and shoku (eat). In a sense, the full moon is "being eaten" by the shadow of the earth.

By the way, a solar eclipse is called nisshoku. The chinese characters are nichi (day/sun) and shoku (eat) and the sunlight is "being eaten" by the new moon passing between of the earth and the sun.

Hope you were able to see the eclipse where you were.