Dear Dayre,
#yinagoestojapan
Hello hello from Kyoto! 😆 We left Osaka today and took a train down to Kyoto, where we checked into our apartment for the next three days!
But before we left Osaka, I woke YZ up bright and early to see the last of Osaka 😍
YZ and I both love eating "street" food, so I brought him to Kuromon Ichiba Market at Osaka so that he could sample different kinds of food all in the same place!
It's also my first time at Kuromon and I chanced upon it via blog hopping when I was researching for the trip.
Supposedly, it's where all the chefs go to for their fresh supplies but I definitely saw more tourists there than locals 😂
For the foodies looking for relatively good and cheap fresh seafood, it's super fun!
Bought these rice mochi thingies hahaha or rather YZ did but I didn't eat them.. I go to markets for fresh food not for these kinda snacks!
First store that caught my attention was a small shop selling fresh seafood that's grilled on the spot! The owners looked so pleasant and nice that I wanted to buy their food 😂 Looks like father and son, right?
Grilled scallop and prawn, that cost 700 yen and 600 yen.
My favourite part is that it's grilled freshly on the spot!! Some stores already have their food cooking on the grill or cooked already and then reheated which I feel like is just to make a quick buck off tourists who don't know any better.
Look at the little drawing on the card for the sea urchin.. It's the little things from Totoro! So cute?!
YZ and I have never had sea urchin before, and because we were feeling adventurous, we decided to order one to have it raw!
Looked pretty scary to me lol
But once you overcome how poisonous and dangerous it appears to be and actually taste the meat inside, it's actually very sweet and delicious!
Sort of reminded me of scallop, except even sweeter and with a sort of creamy texture.
Interesting first experience eating sea urchin!
One of the best things we had at the market was Kobe and Wagyu beef, eaten street style!
We walked past the stall that had a display of fresh meats, and were enticed into buying two different cuts of meat to try! 😍 Kobe beef is quite expensive so we took a cut that was lower grade but it still tasted crazy good!!
The Kobe Beef was 2000 yen and the Wagyu Beef was 3000 yen! Not cheap, but affordable compared to Singapore prices liao la..
After sampling both, I have to say that Kobe beef is 👍
It was sooooo good! The marbling is so fine that you don't taste the fattiness at all, but the texture and flavour is just incredible. So melt-in-your-mouth and yet with a firm, meaty bite at the same time!
This store selling tuna was right next to the beef shop and woah it's amazing to see the way the chef was slicing up all that sashimi 😳 Look at that giant tuna head it's scary.
We were sort of full after we finished the two plates of beef so we gave the tuna a miss, which I slightly regret now!
But I had my eyes set on having some snow crab legs because we'd walked past a huge seafood shop earlier selling snow crab legs so off we went back for my crab!
Probably the most expensive thing we've had on our trip so far: this pack of snow crab at 5,800!
Fwahhhhhhh. But seriously for 35SGD per pax, how to eat your fill of snow crab in singapore?
😍😍😍 We were SO full after finishing the snow crab!
Definitely worth the splurge though.
We felt like we ate a lot but because it was mostly meat and seafood, it didn't feel like we were overstuffing ourselves. It was a very satisfying kind of shiok-ness.
There's lots of other fresh seafood available at Kuromon Ichiba including fresh scallops, sashimi, prawns, and more! I really wanted to try more but that was all my tummy could take!
We spent a good two hours trawling through the food stalls at Kuromon, before moving on to our next activity!
I met QQ (my Yorkshire terrier's) Japanese twin today too at Kuromon! 😂 Kawaii-ne!
We visited an owl cafe at Osaka! 😍😍😍
Well if you've already been following me on snapchat, you'll see what I was up to earlier today!
Side note: Wearing a dress coming up on TVD! 😌
The owls were sooooo cute I KENUT. I just kennut take it 😍
HELLO HEDWIG! Such a beauty!!
(It's not really called Hedwig. I'm just a HP geek)
We interacted with the owls for about a hour and they were really so adorable!
Just look at this owl that likes to wag its tail feathers when it's in a relaxed mood.. Can it get any cuter?!
AWWWWWW
This one has got really "pong" head feathers and big round black eyes, it's called Mocha!
Such a beautiful specimen of an owl!
By the way, Owls are legal as pets in Japan! An owl costs about as much as a puppy too. It's not cheap!
I've still got so much to update about today, but I have to go catch some sleep now, will carry on updating soon! Fwah this on-the-go updating is damn shag 😳 Hope I can manage to complete today's update!
This is the view from our Kyoto apartment, where we are currently staying for three nights! It's located in an old neighborhood and is absolutely gorgeous 😍
We took a taxi from our Osaka hotel to the train station, and took a train to Kyoto before switching to the subway to reach our apartment!
I think I'm getting pretty good at this traveling around in Japan thing but Tokyo is gonna be a different story cos the railway is so much more complicated 😂
Spotted a cool ojisan walking in our neighborhood near Kyoto Shiyakushomae!
There are plenty of old shops and modern hipster looking ones around the neighborhood, which is so interesting! 😍
Spotted an old bookshop.
I'm not too sure if you've ever come across this insane video of a Japanese chef werking his omu rice in style.. But I found out that this famous omu rice was right in Kyoto so we made it our mission to visit the restaurant (Kichi Kichi) for a meal!
We also made reservations because the shop only seats 8! It's really tiny!
Here's the best ten seconds of the night: watching the chef slice his perfect omelette and seeing that liquidy eggy innards come spilling out!!! Amazing!!!
Itadakimasu!!!!
Proud chef and his creation!