I'm back and here's some pics!

I got back yesterday and spent the day at my parents' place.  I just got back to my apartment a bit ago and got some pics from the trip formatted.  So, how about some pictures?

Since I didn't really do anything touristy, I didn't take many touristy pictures.  What I did take pics of though is a good majority of the food I had.  So, one of the first places I ate out at was Mos Burger.  I'm not really sure what would be a good US equivalent.  The place seems kind of higher quality than most US fast food places.  Most of their burgers are fairly normal, but I had to get one of their weird ones.  They have a trio of rice burgers, which is probably as weird as it gets.  I got the Seasonal Vegetable one.

Fully vegetarian as far as I could tell.  This picture makes it look small, but it was actually quite big.  At least as big as a Big Mac.  The "buns" are made of sticky rice and the "patty" is made of a seasonal vegetables melded into a tempura patty.  This burger was actually REALLY good.

One the second day, we had lunch at a French Restaurant that was on the campus of Nagoya University.  The meal was fairly well priced.  I believe it was under $10 and came with two courses.

 First course was a fresh salad and a cold potato soup.

Main course was this lovely dish:  Salmon, quiche, pasta, bread, and an olive sauce.  Very tasty and all together, just about the right sized portions.

That night we ate at a place called Hara Kitchen, which is a sort of healthy, organic cafe that's located in the women's clothing section of a department store.  Odd, huh?  The place has a small, but very good menu.  Here's what I got.

 This dish was tofu with ocra, cherry tomatos, seaweed, some kind of beans, and rice with a sauce of some sort.  Don't remember what kind of sauce, but it tasted really good.  Came with a salad and miso soup.

 This was my dessert.  Not pictured is the donought that I had with it.  This is a tofu ice cream and yogurt parfait with banana, kiwi, and grapefruit. 

On Sunday, we had a quick breakfast at Sakai.  We went to a sort of mini family restaurant in the station called Komeda's Coffee.  Here's their logo.

My brother had been informed by co-workers that the place wasn't very good.  I would have to disagree, I didn't think it was bad.  Then again, we didn't really have the regular breakfast items.  This is what I had.

I had to have kakigori at some point, figured I'd get it then.  Look, they even included toast!  This is green tea flavored shaved ice.  The stuff on it is red beans.  This stuff tastes amazing and this combination of red beans with green tea is a great flavor.  They also had some funky drink items, like melon soda served in a boot shaped glass and milk shakes that are served in these funky looking jars.

We wound up having bento boxes for lunch that day, but I didn't take any pictures.  From the afternoon to night we spent the rest of the day hanging out with my brother's co-worker.

There was a lot of beer.  Not pictured are the nachos the guy's wife made, which were really good.

This is his dog, Doogle the Poodle.

That night we went to an Indian/Nepalese restaurant.  I got a vegetarian curry with a three star spiciness level.  I probably could have gone the full five stars.

 I had to get a picture of the Naan bread they served.  It was HUGE!  I had to include a shot of my hand in there for scale.  It should be noted though that I'd already eaten part of the left side of it.  I held it up next to my niece and it was bigger than her head.  We were pretty much the only ones in the restaurant for some reason though and the staff was really nice.

 On Monday we had lunch at the school's cafeteria.  This is the only time I actually got some ramen.  So, I had to get the spiciest that they had.  It's a spicy miso ramen and only cost about 340 yen.  Very cheap, but a very good portion.

 And for dinner that night, we ate at a very small restaurant that was in Sakai in the basement of an office building.  Unfortunately, I do not know what the name of it was.  I ordered flavored, grilled mackerel.  The "flavor" part of the name comes from the fact that it was grilled in miso.  This was good, but it had the bones in it, so it can be tricky getting them out, but basically you just pull them all out in one go.  Every time I've had grilled fish in Japan, it has been some of the absolute best I've had.  Everything included in this meal was:  fish, sauce for dipping fish, rice, seaweed, pickles & raddish, tofu, and miso.  Plus this place had what's known as a drink bar, which means you can get refills.  That is extremely rare in Japan.

Tuesday, when I left, my brother accompanied me to the airport and we got a surprisingly fancy lunch.

I probably should've looked at the prices before we went in, but honestly, it was all worth it.  So, what's in the bowl you might ask?

Eel, that's what.  It's kind of funny, this place had a specific method and order in which you're supposed to eat.  First, you're supposed to mix the eel with the rice and set aside your portion in that bowl on the left.  You may eat it like this.  Next, you are to add the dried seaweed (in the silver package) along with the three things on the bottom.  you may eat that.  Finally, when you only have a bit left, hot water is poured into it which essentially makes the dish into ochazuke, which is a sort of rice soup.

Not pictured, on Friday my brother and I did some bar hopping.  We hit three, one together and two with one of my brother's co-workers.  The first was pretty good, it was a working man's bar with fried food.  Second was a very small bar run by a K-1 fighter.  He was very impressed with the Ghouls & Ghosts shirt I was wearing.  The third one almost felt like a diner and had a bunch of puzzles at the bar.  The funny thing was that at the two final bars, all of the customers and proprietors knew my brother's co-worker.