Category: Travel

Today I achieved one of my Japanese food goals. Eating fluffy Soufflé pancakes. My friend Sally (Dave’s wife) told me about them a few months ago when we were out at dinner and after some (by that I mean much) googling and research about them, they were on my absolute must try list for our trip to Japan.

They are very popular, but can be hard to get as each serve takes about 20 minutes to prepare, so there can be long queues where ever they are sold. My advice ? Get there an hour before closing time in the afternoon.

We were in Harajuku this afternoon and feeling a little peckish so I quickly googled for the nearest place and up popped Rainbow Pancake only a hundred metres or so from

Where I was standing. Got there and there was only one other group waiting so we got in pretty quickly.

I had apple and caramel flavour and Dave had macadamia nut. Washed down with ice cold brew coffee.

So the verdict? How do they taste? Wonderful! Flavour isn’t much different to normal buttermilk pancakes but the texture is just so so different. Would I have them again ? Absolutely.

One serving was ¥1,150 or about $15 at current exchange on 27th June 2019

We spent half a day up at Nikko visiting the shrines and temples here. It truly is a beautiful spot. Quite lucky it wasn’t crowded as we were here in the middle of the week. Easy place to get to when you have a JR pass, two trains from Tokyo with a very easy train change at the halfway point.

There is a bus system here that can take you to everything there is to see, however we just walked to the two main sites from the station which took about 30min.

The main thing here is the Toshogu Shrine (東照宮, Tōshōgū) which is the final resting place of Tokugawa Ieyasu The founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The shrine is famous for the Three Wise Monkeys engraving (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil). It’s a very colourful and beautiful place.

The other famous site we visited is the Shinkyo Bridge. Pictures really don’t do it justice on how beautiful this is. The water flowing below was crystal clear with a blue hue to it. It was a warm and humid day and it looked so inviting for a swim, although I’m sure that would be frowned upon here.

We had lunch on the way back to the station at a little bakery a few hundred metres from the station.

Here is an example of the trains you could take to get to Nikko as a day trip

Yesterday afternoon once the food tour was over we headed over to Kappabashi street to look at all the food related products. The entire street is dedicated to vendors selling items for the food industry. An excellent souvenir to take home would be a good quality Japanese kitchen knife (just don’t carry it in your hand luggage). This street also sells all the fake plastic food you see on display in restaurants.

This guy in the chef’s hat is at the start of Kappabashi St.

How do I get here ?

You can walk from Ueno station on the Yamanote line (the walk takes about 10 minutes). You can get closer if you take the Ginza subway line

When searching in Google maps, the big Chef is found at “Niimi Cooker”. The closest metro station is Tawaramachi.

Off to Nikko today. We booked a seat on a train leaving Tokyo at 7:32. Tokyo is about 20min from Shinagawa on the Yamanote line normally so it was going to be an early day. I worked out since we had a JR pass we could “cheat” and grab a Shinkansen to go from Shinagawa to Tokyo which dropped the time down to 7 minutes. The other advantage is that we would be in the Shinkansen platform area and wouldn’t have to hunt around to find it. Tokyo is a massive station and finding the platforms was something I was a little worried about.

The dilemma for the morning was realised when we went for a coffee and nothing opens before 7. We walked around for a good 30 min checking all the cafes and didn’t find any open before 7. At least now I know where all the coffee places in Shinagawa are! (and there are way more than I initially thought). Dean and Deluca were the closest one to the Shinkansen platforms, so we waited outside that one for it to open at 7.

So here we are almost with our noses pressed against the automatic door waiting for the café to open so we could be first to order, get our coffee and bolt over to the Shinkansen platform to get the 7:13 train to Tokyo. The first coffee made from the machine won’t be it’s best, but hey sometimes in life you have to sacrifice something.

Thankfully just as you would expect in Japan the café opened at 7 (technically 6:59). We ended up with 5 minutes to spare.

Two years ago I did an amazing food tour of Paris and I discovered they now have a Tokyo option, so I was super keen to book on this. https://www.secretfoodtours.com/tokyo/

Our guide Kyoko meet us just before 11 at Ueno station and we were able to have a introductory chat and meet the other people doing the tour with us. The group was small with only 5 people in total. This was great as it was easy to move around with a smaller group and get to know the people a little. Kyoko was such an excellent host answering all the questions we could possibly come up with about Japanese food and life during the tour.

Overall this was an amazing tour and fantastic value. It went for over 5 hours and we ate so much food.

We learnt Ueno is one of oldest parts of Tokyo. After WW2 when things were scarce and the area was known a place to get things on the black market. During the older Edo period when there were lots of single men in the area it was known for street food vendors as the men had no one to cook for them. There are still lots here and the streets are full of food outlets

The first Resturant was a sushi place. I was a little apprehensive as I’m not a seafood eater, however Kyoko helped order a few things that were not all seafood. I did still try the shrimp and red meat tuna. I was actually surprised how non fishy they tasted. Also had some pickled ginger, lotus root and Burdock. I’ve never had the last two before. I chose cold green tea given how hot it was today. Very nice

Place 2 – Japanese Croquettes (Menchi katsu). Two words. Fast and delicious. From a street vendor in Ueno. Picture probably describes it better than words. I would probably have walked straight past this without giving it a second thought.

After this walked past a place selling lots of seafood. This is a sea pineapple. Never heard of it before.

Stop 3 – Tea. A stop at a shop selling green tea where we got to sample. I learnt something new. The green tea was sweet and delicious, not bitter like it is at home. The key is water temperature. Let it seep at 80c, not 100c

Stop 4 – Dashi. We stopped by a place that sold ingredients for Dashi made from dried kelp, dried bonito, dried shitake mushroom & dried whitebait. The way it was described it’s used in many dishes similar to how we would use vegetable or chicken stock. I sampled some dried kelp

Stop 5 – Secret Restaurant. Wow so much food. A sit down place where we were each given a drink of choice plus massive tray containing

• Tofu
• Egg custard
• Dashi soup
• Salad with sashimi
• Tempura
• Sea bream
• Green tea pudding
• Rice
• Fried chicken
• Pickled ginger

Stop 6 was a preserved food store, has been in business for 300 years. Most interesting was dried grasshopper. Unfortunately I’m just not that adventurous and didn’t get any of that.

Stop 6 Ueno Park. We wandered around the park to walk off some of the food and checked out a few of the temples

Stop 7 – Gyoza Restaurant. Had some delicious Gyoza washed down with Shōchū mixed with frozen fruits. (Shochu is a Japanese traditional hard liquor, distilled spirits made from grains and vegetables. The most common base ingredients are sweet potato, barley, rice, buckwheat and sugar cane)

Stop 8 – An izakaya (place for standup eating and drinking) where we had yakitori sticks and another Shōchū

Stop 9 was a place selling fruits, I chose some pineapple. After this i mentioned to Kyoko we wanted to go to Kappabashi street and she kindly showed us how to get there.

This was a fantastic tour I would highly recommend if you find yourself in Tokyo.

Some other pics from around Ueno. This one indicates the restaurant is open from 11am till 5am the next morning.