Kamakura: Round Two

Pictures from my second visit to Kamakura.

The inside of one of the shrines, complete with intricate ceiling design. 

The smallest beer can I've ever seen.

Narisawa: Asia's best restaurant

A place in Tokyo called 'Narisawa' won Asia's best restaurant. I went to check it out and it lived up to expectations. Because of the food and the great company, the meal will live long in the memory.

A few of the restaurant's awards:

An appetiser that looked like a woodland floor. It included a piece of edible bark, some tempura as well as flower petals and a kind of mild cider in the small piece of hollowed out tree.

This looked better than it tasted. It was some sort of onion, with a super-thin burnt crust.

Tiny, crispy fish that had quite a bitter taste.

'Earth water'.

Japanese oysters, both large and small.

Fantastic fruity, citrus-infused bread that was baked at the table.

Crayfish salad.

Potentially deadly blowfish that was deep fat fried, with a green pepper mayonnaise and wrapped up in newspaper like traditional fish and chips. It had a much richer flavour and denser texture than I've tasted with other fish and I now understand why people undertake the meticulous task of preparing it.   

Fish soup. 

A great piece of steak, with some parsnip-like vegetables that are only in season two weeks a year. 

Dessert...

Vodka cocktail, with freeze-dried yuzu (small Japanese grapefruit). 

More dessert.

Tiny, home-made macaroons.

My fantastic lunch friends. 

Spam sushi

J-League action

On the weekend I watched the table-topping Yokohama Marinos beat the Kawasaki Frontale with a last-minute winner. At the end, the players celebrated like they had won the World Cup, with a lap of honour and almost an hour of victory songs.

Although the stadium wasn't full, the fans of both teams jumped up and down, singing their hearts out. It was also interesting to note how many banners there were with French and Italian phrases. Unfortunately, security stopped me from getting my shirt signed by Arsenal legend Junichi Inamoto.

Naked hijinks and eating eggs cooked in the onsen

I just got back from a day trip to Hakone, a popular onsen (hot spring) area, just outside Tokyo.

I managed to pack a lot of things in - eating a black egg that extends your life, taking a boat trip around Lake Ashinoko and asking another naked onsen customer to take my picture (see below).

Here's a pictorial journey:

Taking the cable car up the mountain to the...'egg cafe'? 

 The egg, cooked in a volcanic onsen, which turns the shell black and gives it a strange sulphuric smell. Yum.

Donning the yukata again:

Mount Fuji in the distance:

The faux-pirate ship I cruised the lake in. It was formed over 3000 years ago after a volcano exploded.

Solid advice:

UFC

The weekend just gone, I went to a UFC event. The first few fights were quite dull (plenty of rolling around, with little clarity as to who was winning), but in the final fight, a scary Brazilian guy did this to a not-as-scary American guy (about 1.56 into the video).

Skiing in a blizzard

We went skiing on the weekend and got caught in the craziest blizzard I've ever seen. It was so cold, the light inside my camera froze, even though it was in a padded case, underneath two layers of clothing! Check out the video...