We had a pretty leisurely start in the morning around 10. There's a morning market along the river everyday day and it's only about 10 minutes away. It was snowing all day, gently bit big flakes. We finally had an excuse to wear hats, gloves, and warmer undies for me.
Fair warning, this will be more or less a food report blog today. But we're ok with that. We DID go to a very cool museum but just an fyi I'm just going to power through the food parts.
Stopped and grabbed 2 skewers of Mutarashi Dango. Chewy rice dumplings covered in soy glazed and grilled. Fun to eat, chewy, salty, nutty, cheap.
Next up was Yakimo, baked Japansse sweet potato. Its served plain but doesn't need anything else, sweet and tasty.
We sat down in a little cafe for coffee and cubes of merengue with a stiff toasted sugar coatingthis.
Watched birds and koi in the river. There was a heron, some ducks, a crane, and pigeons.
We each got a fresh croissant, butter and chocolate versions to split. Nice and hot, just ok as far as croissants go. Sarah lured a pigeon with a crumb and managed to tap his butt with her foot. We've done this in several countries now and we try to keep it going.
After that we went down to the Showkan Museum. The Showa era is basically post war Japan era when economy started booming and the museum is amazing. Its just filled with stuff and room recreations. You can touch things and interact a bit. Its very neat. They even have a movie theater room set up in the dark, but it was a movie in the middle with no subtitles and the theater chairs were a little tight. On top of it the kerosene heater in there put off a normal albeit not pleasant smell.
There was also a semi functioning pachinko parlor inside. With pachinko and pachinko slot machines. Pachinko is a way of dodging anti gambling laws fyi. You play with metal balls and then you cam exchange metal balls for prizes....like money...But these were just to play for fun.
Took probably 40 minutes to get through it. Quick but just such a neat setup. There was also a retro museum in another part of town that looked similar based on pics but not sure.
From there we went back to wandering old town streets which are mostly restaraunts and souvenirs here. I was annoyed because every place I wanted to grab lunch was closed. We were thinking it mightve been a holiday. Hesterday would've been coming of age day which we saw some girls dressed up for. 14/15 of Jan is more the official day for burning ofudas (little new year according to wiki) but not sure.
We found a soba place open and Sarah got a set with Tempura and I got a soba bowl with tempura bits in it. I'd been wanting to try soba for a while. Its buckwheat noodles in broth so healthy ish. It was fine.
We grabbed some A5 hida wagyu skewers that were delicious.
Tried hida beef sushi. Very lightly seared beef on rice. Very rare, just ok, not preffered to on a stick.
Stopped at a Sake shop and sampled sake at little dispensers. You load a card (in this case I did 1000yen) and pay for a little cup of sake with the ones you want.
Stopped at...ANOTHER beef skewer place and munched those.
Final stop was the grocery store again. We would've done a butcher shop but they were all closed. We got some more drinks, rice, cabbage, and a small steak of top grade Hida Beef.
After starting some laundry and soaking in the outdoor tub we cooked our meal and woof. Best beef I've ever had. Not much to cooking it, seared both sides and added a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Just melts man. 3000yen/$20 for the best steak we've ever had.
We started catching up on the Sumo tournament. 15 days long, today was day 4. Watched 1 but its hard when we wind up this tired at the end of the day. In a couple more days we should have some time though.
Ate thebpudding from yesterday, it was pretty good but didn't blow our minds. The glasses are cute souvenirs though.
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