Me, keep calm?

I see two problems with this.
1) I don't just want to listen to David Garrett, I need to look at him.
2) How to keep calm when looking at a rock god? Even when he's playing Paganini?

Goodbye, fur friend

Looking at all my pictures of Toby ...

Together again

Mother's Day dinner

Closest I can get to seafood in Japan ... lobster from Boston, and oysters from Canada, pasta presumably from Italy (but a lot of the pastas here are Australian) ... in any case, a cosmopolitan meal :)

Food!

I can't believe I published a whole series of posts on Japan and never had one on the food. So here's where I go overboard ...

Green tea binge ... cake, ice cream and chocolate 

One-woman one Michelin Star kushiage restaurant. We had to look very hard for it in a warren of back streets. Apparently, that back street had the highest concentration of Michelin Stars in Osaka. It had limited seating, mostly at a counter, and we were lucky we could get in without a prior reservation. We had to wait an hour though -- we just wandered around the area in that time. And ran into a Singaporean couple who came to make a reservation for another day. They told us that they had just eaten at a restaurant so exclusive next door, they had to ring a doorbell for entry. So we promptly got reservations there for another evening.

The prettiest salad I've ever seen

Kushiage gives new meaning to fried things on sticks

Kuromon Market

A fishmonger at the market had a sit-down corner so of course we sat down .. with crab, lobster and sea urchin.

I went back the next day for a seafood bowl breakfast. And that was after a paper cup of fresh soya milk and a scallop grilled then served on its shell as a plate. 

Grill-your-own Matsusaka beef. Richer, i.e. more marbled than Kobe beef. We had to make reservations days in advance and toggle our schedule a bit to suit.

Garlic rice, and perfunctory grilled vegetables.

Beans and rice from the market, eaten under cherry blossoms at Osaka Castle, in my own one-person hanami. The hanamis around me were more elaborate. Some of them had barbecues set up. 

Green tea and macaroons at the hotel in the afternoon, a quick pick-me-up before heading out again.  I was impressed in Melbourne with their McDonalds for having macaroons. Osaka impressed me more. These two came from the 24/7 Lawson chain of convenience stores, and at only 200 yen. And came with a wet wipe for you to clean up after your snack.

Not chocolate bars but bath salts

I had no idea what this is called, but it's a wafer base, spread with mayo and some other sauce, and topped with a fried egg. There was no way to eat this without making a mess.

Strawberry fields forever ... in all sizes, and all sweet. The largest ones were the size of golf balls, and those were priced individually instead of by per punnet.

I heard about outrageously expensive melons, would this be really expensive for a melon?

Good tea needs a beautiful cup. Enjoying green tea mixed with fresh roasted rice, Kyoto style,  at home the morning after I got back.