We're on a Trip, not a Vacation!

Let  me count the many ways! Having first gone to Japan for our honeymoon, this was Kyusik and my 4th time and the boys’ third trip.  First, you can have amazing food everywhere you go. During our time in Tokyo, we had the best shaved ice we’ve ever had, sushi for breakfast, late night ramen, yummy panko fried pork called tonkatsu, fancy Buddhist vegetarian food, grilled meat and vegetables called yakitori, and many bento boxes, which we ate on the Shinkansen or bullet train between Tokyo and Nagano. We also hit the basement of Isetan, a fancy department store. Like other nice department stores there, you can buy all sorts of prepared Japanese food to take away. They also carry produce, alcohol, tea, coffee, baked goods, and both Japanese and European desserts. On our penultimate day in Tokyo, we bought sushi, tempura, menchi katsu (fried ground meat cutlet), and had the most beautiful and tasty bento box.  Kyusik and I also enjoyed a number of meals on our own, including...

By Bryce In Tokyo we did many things, and the main thing we did was eat Japanese food. There were 5 big highlights of Tokyo. The first one was a shaved ice place. The shaved ice place had many interesting flavors, but these are the ones we chose. Me: strawberry shortcake Mommy: matcha Daddy: chestnut and Acadian: chocolate raspberry. Mine came first, and in all the shaved ice were little chunks of sweet stuff to add texture. I liked mine the best. Another place we went to was a yakitori restaurant. It was very fancy, and the food was good. Yakitori is chicken that is cooked on skewers. I got chicken skin yakitori, egg yakitori, thigh and onions yakitori, and some rice. The chef serving our food said that we were polite and told Acadian that sticking his chopsticks in his rice was offensive to some Japanese people. After finishing, he walked us out the door. The third place was a curry restaurant. It had tonkatsu and tempura with the curry, and it was really good. My favorite was the to...

When we got to Japan, there were so many good restaurants with food such as ramen, yakitori, which is like meat on a skewer, sushi, dumplings, tempura, and curry. There were lots of ramen places, but my favorite type of ramen was tonkatsu. The yakitori was also really good because there were so many types of meat, and the chefs even walked us out of the door! The sushi was delicious, and my favorite types of fish were salmon and tuna. We actually got to see the tuna being sold! There were raw ones, big ones, small ones, and frozen ones. There were lots of dumplings, but they were all called gyoza. The tempura place was super good, and they were super nice. They even gave us Pokemon stickers because they saw our Pokemon stuffies! There was also the curry which was really good because the rice went perfectly with the yummy sauce. There was also fried meat or fried shrimp with the curry and once there was a curry soup with noodles.   We got some bento boxes for the Shinkansen!