カステラ巻

カステラ巻 or Kasutera roll - that's the kasutera cake that tour guide bought for his glutton tour customer :P

We got this Bunmeido kasutera roll, instead of the traditional kasutera

Food sold in Japan are wrapped up and packaged nicely (and stop staring at the hato sabure cookie behind :P)

Unwrapping the wrapping paper...

2 flavours - honey and green tea

Yummy! I personally think this one is less sweet and more to my liking compared to the one I got from AM/PM and the green tea one is yummy as well :)

Too bad I can't keep till my trip home...


Side note: 4 more working days to go!

カステラ

A couple of months ago, it seems like all the food blogs I read posted up recipe for this particular cake - カステラ (Kasutera/Castella). Very, very tempting. Unfortunately, from memory the recipe requires 8 eggs. So no attempt on trying to bake the cake and I thought I could probably get it off the shelf. I must be looking at all the wrong shops cos I can't seem to find them in Sydney
:(

So I resolved to finding it in Tokyo! :D

In fact, I brought 2 back. One from AM/PM convenience shop, and the other from a train station, courtesy of tour guide. I was yen-less then but tour guide was really nice and bought the cake for his glutton tour customer.

As I bought the one from convenience shop first, I'll post that first.

The package before opening...

Taking the box out...

Lifting the cover... (pardon the messy background :P)

The precious 4 pieces of cake, only 4 pieces...

Viola! The cake... yummy...

Alright, I'll leave you with the cake. Time to hit the bed... :)


Side note: Ugghh.. this week feels so long...

Last Stop at Asakusa

Our last stop was at Asakusa - to visit the Sensoji Temple, also tour guide said that there's a market place that sells souvenirs. We still need to get a couple of quite a few things to bring home.

The Sensoji Temple is not far from the Asakusa train station. Opposite the Kaminari-mon (Thunder Gate) of Sensoji Temple is this very noticeable building - Asahi Beer Headquarters Building.

According to this website, the design for the building on the left is based on a jug of beer, with the white roof mimicking the foam on a jug of beer. As for the shorter building, the black colour of the building represents a black glass of beer with a whip cream on top.

And of course, the Sensoji Temple, the entrance via the thunder gate.

At the side of the entrance, you'll see a few jinrikisha puller waiting for customers.

Going through the thunder gate, is this Nakamise Street where we spent our very last yen and had to bring out the plastic for our purchase. There were also many stalls selling food and tour guide were on guard to remind me to focus and and not be distracted by all the food. :p

At the end of the street... the temple

and the pagoda

After we left Asakusa, we were back to Shinjuku, made a short stop in Takeshimaya and hurried back to the hotel to catch our shuttle bus to the airport.


Side note: Right... back to play with my new toys :P

Shinjuku at night

Taken through the window from the hotel room, with the lights off. :)


Side note: New year resolutions? Ummm

MaiDreamin

There is no spelling mistake on the title. I think in a way it is to potray Maid Dreaming as well as to read as "my dreaming". Don't ask me why I didnt take any pictures of the girls dressing up in maid costume giving away leaflet on the streets, but we did approached a few of them to take the leaflet. We didn't go to the first one that we took the leaflet from cos we were not hungry yet, but the second one was just around the corner, and the timing was right. So we followed the "maid" up to the shop.

 

It is those kind of shop where once the life opens its door, you have reached your destination. There is no corridor or other shops. As we stepped out of the lift, the "maid" who brought us up announced our presence. We were then being informed of the conditions of the cafe.

There are 2 parts of the cafe - a lounge-look-alike area with comfy sofa and the other with long tables and chairs. There is a cover charge for 1 hour with food order, should we overstay the 1 hour, additional charges will apply. (Don't ask me how much, can't remember, I think its 500 yen a hour).

Minimum duration for the lounge look alike area is 30 minutes but no food order allowed. Cover charge for lounge area of 1 hour with food is higher than the long table. We opted to sit at the long table side.

One of the term is no photography allowed except for the food that you have ordered. In this particular cafe, the theme is to set your mood to a good dream, so once we were seated, the maid brought out this light and and blew to light it... indicating the start of the "dream".

I ordered spaghetti and tour guide had steak (or maybe it is call burger) with Coke. When our drinks were being brought to the table, the maid requested for us to follow her suit and make some cute pose = ="

And... when the spaghetti was being served, the maid helped me to mix it. What I didnt expect - there was a chant to go with it, and the whole room or at least all the maids at work and I were suppose to repeat after the maid who is mixing the spaghetti, suppose to make it more tasty.

せーの、まぜまぜ
もえもえ
ニャンニャン
キュンキュン
おいしくなーれ
もえもえ、キュン！
ばっちりおいしくなりました

I copied the chant from here but yea, that's how the chant is in that particular cafe I went to.

Unfortunately, the picture of the spaghetti that I took is after the chanting, so... it just look like a very very plain one.

Tour guide's steak however, no chanting was required but he was allowed to pick any picture that he wanted and the maid will draw it using tomato sauce. Tour guide doesn't have a particular one that he wanted, so we let the maid decide. Hence tour guide got a cat on his rice.

Maid cafe is not a really cheap option for food but I would say it is a novelty and since both of us has never been to one, no harm giving it a try. There is nothing amazing about the food, I would say the food in The Lockup taste better. As for tour guide, I think he felt eating rice with tomato sauce is a little strange :P

Before we left, the light was of course been put off, with another blow by the maid.


Side note: 2 more weeks to home!

Akihabara Electric Town

After finished terrorizing roaming the Takeshita Dori and to avoid the growing crowd in Harajuku, we decide to hop over to the electric town.

Taking the Akihabara Electric Town exit

You can find loads of electrical goodies in Akihara, figurines of anime, little toys in capsule or anime costume. To encourage people to contribute to the capsule toys machine, there's machine to change notes into coins. I slipped in $1000 yen, and out come 10 $100 yen coins. Tour guide said I got this happy look on my face. Hmm... a moment later, he was trying to flipped through his wallet to find a $1000 to slip in the same machine. *smirk*

Anyway, here are some of the toys I bought via the machine. Another one is not in the picture and tour guide contribute his share of coins when I wanted to play with this word sticker machine in Yobadashi Akiba. This is how the sticker machine work - you get to pick the design and layout that you want, then type the words you wanted (it's a touch screen) - can be in hiragana or katakana, and will printed out in sticker form.

There were shops and shops of electrical or anime goodies. Besides that, there is this building call Yobadashi Akiba which has 8 storeys (if I don't remember wrongly) of gadgets goodness. :P

It is organized in the way that each floors is dedicated for different electric appliances. One floor for cameras, one for computers, kitchen appliances, etc. Example is this see-through dish washer for curious people who wants to see the dishwasher at work.

We roam Akihabara from daytime...

... till dark

Side note: Looks like I didn't burst the internet quota yet :P