Ari & Nici in Japan - food and beverages (食べ物と飲み物)

Hey guys (^-^)v

I'm so sorry I didn't post for such a long time.. It was the longest hiatus I have taken until now and I wish I could promise it never happens again, but I am not entirely sure about that. Anyways, I needed some time for myself, also to sort some things out. My current occupation doesn't allow me to have a lot of free time, and I am almost stressed out everyday with studying and homework and more studying (maybe I will explain it in a seperate post if anyone is interested in what I'm doing at the moment). So I took advantage of the holidays I had and did absolutely nothing. And I really needed that for myself to keep me going and to be able to finish the last two semesters. So I hope you understand and are still a little bit interested in what I post. For what comes next, I think there will be two more post about my Japan journey (it's more than a year ago by now Q_Q) and than we will see what's coming as, with a lack of free time, I also don't have time to explore things and show them to you.. But I have some huge plans for my future that I want to share with you and I will keep this blog running to at least that point of time. Anyway, here we go with the next post ^-^

Before Nici and I left for Japan my dad asked me to take photos of the stuff I was going to eat there because he had nearly no idea of what Japanese food was like (except for sushi of course). So I thought it may be a nice idea to write a post about what we were eating and drinking in Japan.
Also, I thought it might be interesting for some people, who also are vegetarians, as Japan is not really a vegetarian-friendly country and there is fish or meat included in lots of things..

While staying at our host family's place in Tokyo we usually got breakfast and dinner from our host mom.

breakfast - red bean paste filled bread, yoghurt with a slice of pineapple and a boiled egg (that I didn't like at all.. tasted like it has been boiled in soy sauce or something..)

breakfast - miso soup and some vegetables rice stuff for the microwave (althought I told our host mom that I am vegetarian I think there was fish included.. I just picked out everything that looked suspicious x3)

Dinner - Japanese style pasta, absolutely delishious *-*

Dinner - rice with stir-fried tofu, onions and some more slimy stuff (but tasted pretty good)

Dessert - CAKE ROLLS!

Dinner - vegetarian hamburger steak and rice

 As you maybe can guess from the amount of pictures I, most of the days, forgot to take pictures.. 
One evening, after we had visited a wind orchestra competition of our host mom's daughter, she treated us to dinner for kaiten zushi (running sushi)

You could either take something off of the conveyor belt or order something you like via touch screen

Mine delicious food ^-^
Our host mom laughed at us for only eating "children's stuff"..

they also had so yummy desserts that were soo amazing ^-^

As poor stundents don't travel with enough money to go to restaurants, we also bought a lot of food in Convenience Stores:

Dango and Milk tea

left - Nici's; right - mine, there was fish in the sushi rolls but I just picked it out

Yakisoba Pan

Omu raisu and Pasta

Melon Pan

A really great thing about Japan is that there are vending mashines for drinks nearly everywhere. Especially during the hot summers this is super convenient and refreshing ^-^

C. C. Grape - really delicious

My favourite drink of all time: C. C. Lemon ♥

favourite tea - just usual green tea, super refreshing at hot days ^-^

One day in Osaka we also got a pizza. As you might have heard before, pizza in Japan is super-expensive. We paid like 15 Euros for a normal-sized one (in Germany you can get some for like 5 Euros or even cheaper), and it was not even delicious.. My pizza margherita was flavoured with some strange herbs and tasted really unfamiliar, and the pizzas my friend's had ordered, did not have that usual pizza crust, but were made with some kind of puff paste instead.. I don't know if all pizza stores do it that way, but I can not really recommend eating pizza in Japan alone because of the price x'D

We also bought a lot of the really fancy snacks and ice creams Japan has to offer:

Ice cream from Baskin Robbins - Suica (watermelon) and cookie flavour. Definitely try out this store! Is has one of the best ice creams I have ever eaten

Frozen yoghurt you could assort on your own! Unfortunately, you pay for the weight and these were a bit very expensive..

Hello Kitty dounut at Sanrio Puroland (did not taste as good as it looked to be honest..)

famous Harajuku Crepe with strawberries, cheese cake, and chocolate sauce ♥

Last but not least I want to show you our food we had at fast food restaurants. All in all, we only tried two of them: Lotteria and MOS Burger. MOS Burger is my absolutely all time favourite! At the moment they only offer one vegetarian burger, but it is absolutely delicious ♥

Melon Soda and Rice-Kinpira Burger at MOS♥

Lotteria one the other hand only has frensh fries if you don't eat meat or fish...

Frensh Fries and (of course) Melon Soda again ^-^

But next time I also want to try Freshness Burger. They also offer a vegetarian black bean burger ^-^

Japan has to offer a really wide range of food and you will definitely not die of hunger as a vegetarian, but on the other hand it is really hard to find something you can eat in a restaurant. When we went eating out with our host family in Osaka, our host dad ordered ramen without meat for me and it was no problem, but I haven't tried it on my own yet, so I don't know if it had worked out too. But in supermarkets and conbinis you get lots of food you can eat and it's really good! It's just a bit sad that it is hard to get traditional food without meat or fish. If you are really craving for it, you can go to a Buddhist temple restaurant that traditionally serve vegan food, but it's terribly expensive so I didn't do it..

Well, I hope I could give you some new information and provide an insight into what kind of food will expect you if you don't go to restaurants.

Thank you for reading, and feel free to leave your opinion or questions in the comments!

See you next time (^-^)v

 

Ari and Nici in Japan: Sanrio Puroland ♥

Hey my dears ^.^

time for a new post about my holidays in Japan ♥

This time about our visit at Sanrio Puroland!

Have you heard of it before?

It's a theme park for (small) children with sanrion characters ^-^

The most famous: Hello Kitty of course

Here is their website, if you want to know more:

http://en.puroland.jp/ 

There even is a Halloween special at the moment ^.^

But now about our visit:

We took the train to get to Puroland and it took so long.. nearly an hour.

When we got out the train at the station, we were a bit surprised,

because there was nothing o.o

Just a small station, a conbini and very few people..

We thought like, omg where are we?

But we were very sure, it was the right station..

So we went out and luckily saw this:

Ok, we are at the right place x3

 

We saw a few people enter the park, but the other parts of the street were

totally abandoned.. maybe because of the 35°C that day..

 We didn't have to wait long at the entrance.

There were several people, who wanted to enter, but since we were

in convenient Japan and not in the lack of service culture Germany,

we just had to wait for about two minutes x3

In Puroland there are several shows and 

some rides and sttractions you can enter.

We decided to first take part in the 'Sanrio Boat Ride'

It was pretty cute but at some times a bit scary..

The rooms became so dark and then a cute music box sound started to play..

like in a horror movie q.q

After this we headed on to 'Lady Kitty House':

We saw a short movie on the screen in the entrance hall

in which Kitty-chan invited us to visit her house ♥

and then we could enter:

There were also some parts where you could take "interactive" photos x3

Tea Ceremony with Kitty-chan

Milk Tea bath

After this we all took a photo together with lady Kitty

but we thought it was to expensive to buy it.

Next we decided to have a little break

and went on to Cinnamoroll's Cafe.

My food:

Melon Soda and Chocolate Hello Kitty Donut

and Nici's food:

I forgot what it was called...

but the waitress obviously didn't undertand her well

and she got the ice cream for free xD

Since Cinnamoroll is my favourite Sanrio Character,

I couldn't resist but take a photo with him ♥

After eating we went on to 'Kuromi's Rent-a-Car' Ride:

You rode in My Melody Cars.

One of them was placed outside the ride and a very nice staff member

took photos of you in the cars ♥

The rode itself was quite short which is why I don't have photos of it..

Since it was summer holidays when we were there,

there also was a Natsu Matsuri special in one room.

At the entrance you could buy some coins and play games

at the character booths each character had.

Near the exit of the park there is a huge fan shop of course.

But although it's that big they barely had merch of

my favourite characters cinnamoroll and kuromi..

this made me a bit sad q.q

But nevertheless it was a funny experience to visit Sanrion Puroland ^.^

I would just recomment you to not go there during summer holidays..

we went there very early that day and already left in the early afternoon.

Just at the time when it started to get really really crowded x3

Most attractions of Puroland are walk-throughs

and there are many cute sceneries which are not listed on the homepage.

For example there are many factories:

a candy factory, a bread factory and some more.

But the main attraction might be the several shows

but since we didn't understand them, we didn't watch any.

That's it about our visit at Sanrio Puroland ^.^

For the rest of our holidays, Nici had a pink-phobia x'D

Make sure to be prepared for this when you're planing a visit x3

Thank you for reading ♥

See you next time (^-^)v