Cooking Japanese: Matcha Muffins

Hey guys (^-^)v

Recently we had a week off so I found some time to bake something ^-^ It's been so long since I had time for this and I really wanted to try making Matcha Muffins. I told my father about this before, so he was so kind as to give me matcha as a birthday present!

I used a recipe from the German cooking blog 'Nekobento'.

Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated for some years now, but I still like to visit their website to find some yummy stuff. And most recipes are really easy so even no cooking talents like me can do it xD

Nekobento's recipe is for only six muffins, but since I have a baking mould for 12, I just doubled the amount of everything.

Here is what you need:

240g flour

150g cream cheese

150g sugar

100g butter

100ml milk (I used oat milk)

2 eggs

20g matcha

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

 

weighting sugar

First, you need butter, sugar, and the cream cheese.

Fill it into a bowl and mix it.

Mix the eggs with the milk and then put it into the bowl with the other stuff and mix it again.

(Left: sugar, butter, and cream cheese; right: ...mixed with eggs and milk)

Now take another bowl to mix the flour, baking powder, and matcha, sift it through a sieve into the bowl with the other ingredients and mix everything.

 When you're done, fill everything into the baking mold and bake for about 25 minutes.

If you want, you can sprinkle them with powder sugar when they've cooled down:

I hope you enjoy them! ♥

Thanks for reading and see you next time (^-^)v

Ari & Nici in Japan: Dotonbori River Festival, Osaka ♥

Hey guys (^-^)v

This will be my last post about our Japan trip, which is now more than one year ago. Our time over there flew by so fast, now it seems to me like we didn't spend more than a week in Japan although it were three.. But I'm very happy I can go back to Japan in the late summer of this year again! And this time I will be there for longer *-*

 However, the last post about Japan I want to share with you is about the Dotonbori River Festival we attended while being in Osaka. I really like the city of Osaka very much and hope I can spend more time there somewhen in the future.

The Dotonbori festival is a lantern festival along the riverside of Dotonbori river. It is located directly in the city centre around Ebisubashi, the bridge where the famous Glico Man billboard is located. The whole riverside was decorated with hundrets of lanterns, and the people were dancing traditional dances everywhere.

As this was a Japanese summer festival (祭り), we dressed in Yukata that we had bought at a store in Studio Alta in Tokyo.

Nici in her pretty Yukata ^-^

 As this was (at least that year) my last chance to take a picture with Glico Man, 
I could not let this chance go wasted:

 I was really lucky as a few days later the billboard was changed to the picture of a woman (from a famous band if I remember correctly) in a Glico dress, whereabout a lot of people complained. We spent the rest of the evening, which was also our last day in Japan, at the festival (and in the nearby Don Quijote store x'D). 

I don't have anything else to tell about the festival, maybe only that our way back to our host family's house (15 min walk from the station) turned into hell. As you can see in the pictures above, we wore these traditional japanese sandals without socks. That was a big mistake as I think.. First of all, the sandals were one-sized.. and Nici and I have pretty big feet, according to Japanese standarts, so these shoes didn't fit really well. Additionally, the band rubbed on our feet the whole time while walking and resulted into huge blisters the next day.. 
So, if you're not used to them, better wear them with socks x3

 Unfortunately, this was our last real day in Japan. We spent the next day with packing all our lugguage and cleaning the rooms we used in the host family's house. After that, we went to the city to eat something and then headed for the airport, where we had to spent the night. I'm still happy that and surprised how everything I bought had fit into my suitcase x'D

I hope when autumn comes, I'll be able to blog about adventures in Japan again ♥
Thank you for reading! See you next time (^-^)v

Berlin: Baby Metal Concert, Video Game Museum & 60s Diner

Hey guys (^-^)v

during this year's sommer holidays, I spent some days in Berlin to attend the Baby Metal concert with a friend and to spend some time there with my mom and my boyfriend.

I always plan to take some pictures during concerts to share them with you, but I always end up not doing it because I want to enjoy every moment of it and decide to leave my phone in bag that I hand in at the cloakroom..

So again, I only have some pictures from the outside of the concert venue:

concert venue: Huxley's Neue Welt (named after Aldous Huxley's 'brave new world' I think)

lots of people although the doors were already opened when we arrived as we got a bit lost on the way x'D

 Have a derpy picture of us before the concert with Eric from Sylt who we met while searching for the event location x'D

The concert itself was really amazing and we had lots of fun! ♥



The next day my mom and my boyfriend came and we spent another 2 days in Berlin. My mom found an interessting hotel and we wanted to give it a try:

This was our 'room' x3
It's like camping but in a wooden hut. They are equipped with light and electricity but nothing else. For washing and going to the toilet, you have to go to a central house on the camping ground. It was really funny, but as summers in Germany are kinda unpredicatble, it was terribly cold although it was August...
It was great there and the staff was really friendly, so if you want to give it a try if you're coming to Berlin, this is their homepage:
  http://scubepark.berlin/

The next day, we went to the 60s diner for breakfast/early lunch.

They not only have really cool walls and mini music boxes at the tables, but also amazingly decorated washing rooms:

  
 

 Unfortunately, the food wasn't as good as we remembered it to be, so we might go somewhere else the next time..
In the Hotel, we found a brochure about a videogame museum located in Berlin and thought we had to go there.
On our way, we also found a museum dedicated to Berlin's speciality food 'Currywurst'.
They sold Currywurst plushies and Japanese brochures xD

But let's move on to the videogame museum ^-^

 Like a museum is supposed to, they have many exhibits showing the history and evolution of video games, e.j. computers with the first computer game and postcards with printed chessboards you could send to and fro between two parties to play chess over a long distance, but also lots of videogame consoles of course.

But the museum does not only have exponats to show you the evolution 
of video games, but you can also try them!
They have lots of old games you can try. For example a programm called 'Eliza', which was created in 1966. It is based on a simple writing programm, where you can type in a question and Eliza answers it ^-^ My boyfriend gave it try:

 

But the best part for me really was the arcade centre!

 

They had lots of games you could try ^-^
 It was the first game I could play Space Invaders as a real arcade game!

 
 

I even made it to the highscore list in Asteroids:
(6th place ^-^)

 

It was really fun to go there ^-^
You could even play Dance Dance Revolution or see one of the first arcade games ever: Pong. But unfortunately, you could not try this one out..

After spending several hours in the Videogame Museum, we wanted to grap something to eat and decided to go to the Japanese Crepe Restaurant Crepestation ♥

   

We had a Matcha Latte, one crepe with strawberry cheesecake and one with chocolate icecream, cherries and peaches ♥

 

Last but not least, I want to show you a picture I took at a subway station. All walls where covered with pictures of famous inventers and their inventions, among them was Gyro Gearloose *-* (his German name is Daniel Düsentrieb)


  
And that's how our trip to Berlin came to an end.
I hope I can come back again soon as I really like this city.

Thank you for reading!
See you next time (^-^)v