First meal of the day in Kyoto was 牛ロースカツ膳 Chuck Tail Flap (¥1480) and 牛リブロースカツ膳 Rib Eye Roll (¥1380), with 10% tax, which came with free-flow rice, miso soup and cabbage. This place was definitely tourist-friendly, with its multi-language guide on how to eat 牛カツ Gyukatsu aka beef cutlet. We were quite impressed by the crispy exterior of the cutlets while the inside was medium rare and juicy.
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Coffee post lunch, we found this lovely coffee place. Still full from lunch, we opted to share a Cake set (¥1010). The coffee was definitely a perk-me-up. It was strongly bitter and rather acidic, but yet addictive. The chestnut roll was pretty OK, but we preferred the one we tried during our previous trip. It felt like time slowed down inside here! A lovely space to chill 🙂
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For a change, we decided to skip okomiyaki and takoyaki, and the number of yakitori places around the area inspired us to find one, but unfortunately the one we wanted to try didn’t seem keen to want to serve non-Japanese. Oh well. We decided to continue roaming the streets while slowly making our way back to the hotel for an early rest. As we walked past the bars and all, we chanced upon an Izakaya menu being shone under spotlight by the roadside. Turned out that the place was at the basement, and because the menu had assorted skewer platter available, we decided to give it a try!
It was a very cozy place with 4 tables (8 seats) and a small counter bar area, and the waitress only spoke Japanese. We opted for the table and basically just pointed to the 鶏と豚と野菜１０本 (10 chicken, pork and vegetables skewers) (¥1800, worked out to be ¥2640 including appetizer and tax) 😂 Since we were not drinking, we had some みず plain water to go along. There was also a small side of pickled radish, cucumber and ginger to go along with the skewers.
We were very glad that we decided to come here. Each chicken skewer was simply juicy and flavourful. The pork skewer paled in comparison. But the vegetable ones were very delicious too! We also didn’t feel hurried and could take our own sweet time to enjoy the food and each other’s company.
Gotta say this was one of our best random find during this trip 🙂
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We had tried to ask our hotel to help us with the reservations, but they were unable to, due to some reservations policy. Nonetheless, we decided to try our luck walking in. Turned out that we were the very first customers at 12 noon when we arrived.
There were 3 lunch menu, and the difference between the ¥8,000 and ¥6,000 menu was an additional main dish of grilled wagyu beef. We didn’t get to see what was in the ¥15,000 menu, but anyway we opted for the ¥6,000 one, knowing that we would be eating lots during the trip 😅
Despite the relatively short trip, we managed to cover three night markets in 高雄 Kaohsiung 🙂
Since we were quite near 瑞豐夜市 Ruifeng Night Market, it naturally became our first night market to visit.
It has been many years since our last visit, and there were some changes to the variety of food available.
We sampled 厨窗卤味 where we ordered a variety of braised vegetables and meat items for NT195. The braised sauce was quite light and the items were not bad.
This trip occurred because the promotion for Krisflyer miles 15% discount was ending, and we wanted to use up our miles 😛 It was also our longest trip together ever, for we started our planning with great ambition to cover lots of places, before practicality set in, and we decided that we needed a relaxing trip instead, and decided to focus on Kyushu instead 🙂
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Generally, traveling in Japan can be quite a hassle-free experience if you do your homework beforehand 🙂 Because of their strict compliance to punctuality, all transport options depart and arrive on the dot and it becomes quite seamless to plan connections from one place to another.
And with websites such as hyperdia.com, you can get the train schedules for any day and can plan ahead with a few backup plans thrown in 🙂 Bus schedules are also easily obtainable from the operators’ websites or a simple Google.
There are quite a few transport passes available in Kyushu, and depending on your itinerary (and planning), they could prove to be money savers 🙂
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The coffees that we tried in Fukuoka were in general good!
And we seemed to get this feeling that cafes in Fukuoka are generally having very nice ambience and environment (check out the panorama shot in the banner picture) that’s conducive for sipping coffee and watching the world go by…
I think by this point we were pretty much too full to try any cafe food 😛
Because of the recent earthquake, the 2 most famous landmarks of Kumamoto, Mt Aso and Kumamoto Castle, were out of bounds to tourists. Hence we spent most of our time here on trains, checking out the beautiful and casual rides throughout the countryside. So very few cafe hoppings in Kumamoto. 🙂
While we only tried 2 cafes in Kumamoto, we were very impressed by the coffee and desserts both times 🙂
Eat.Eat.Walk.Walk . 吃吃走走 