Yoku Moku Cookies Part II

More Yoku Moku Cookies, and probably the last of them. It seems we've gotten bored of these and moved on to other goodies. Plus these are difficult to get a hold of, and expensive, and the selections are always the same because LE flavors are out of reach for us :(

These Double Chocolat Blancs were from a Japanese grocery store downtown, and for $18/tin too which I thought was pretty reasonable. However, when I went back for more, I was told they could no longer restock these. No reasons were given :(

Afternoon Tea at the Brown Palace Hotel, Denver, Part II

One midday Sunday last fall, hubby and I were nostalgic for those spectacular afternoon tea sessions in Tokyo, so we dragged ourselves downtown Denver to find something close to make do with. We first stopped by a small tea room near his old company's office. Of course, of all the days we picked there was a demonstration downtown that day and the small tea room was totally full with an hour wait time. So off to the Brown Palace Hotel we went, and we got the last table too!

Yoku Moku Cookies

Cookies!!!

Unsurprisingly, hubby and I have found that of all the gifts we brought back from Japan, the snacks are some of most popular among our family and friends. And not just any snacks but iconic ones:
1. Kit Kats in multitude of flavors. Cliche? Yes. Fun? Yes! You can definitely find some of these at your local Japanese (or even Korean!) grocery store, but of course flavors are limited. I've consistently seen matcha and strawberry, both are ubiquitous and boring. The more interesting LE releases are Japan-only, like wasabi (sweet, with only a faint taste of wasabi) and toast-able "pudding" (by "pudding" they always mean Spanish-style flan, I did toast them, and they did have a custard-like flavor).

***Stock photos from Amazon and RocketNews24.

2. Shiroi Koibito. Our family went nuts for these and for good reasons. They're delicious, enough said. You can get them via Rakuten Global or even Amazon, but you sure pay one way or another, via shipping from Rakuten or marked up prices from Amazon, take your pick. Which was why we loaded them up with our move home and even then, our 12 boxes were woefully inadequate and disappeared pretty much instantly.


Then came this past holiday season and one of my sister's friend in Japan sent her a giant tin of Yoku Moku Cookies. Like Shiroi Koibito, Yoku Moku is a brand of premium cookies. The founder Noriichi Fujinawa first tasted a variety of butter cookies when he visited the town Jokkmokk of Sweden. Upon coming home to Japan, he went straight to work recreating the goodies he had and couldn't forget.

Tokyo Eats - Shibuya Area

Shibuya was another under-explored area for me and hubby. Believe it or not, we went to Shibuya more often while living in Yokohama than we did while living in Tokyo. I blame the same big, dense city exhaustion, because being a suburb Yokohama was nowhere as crowded as Tokyo.

Tokyo Eats - Akasaka area

Landing in Tokyo in August of 2015, we got ourselves a major craving for some okonomiyaki. This was before we found Kinu in our neighborhood, you see, so upon some googling we decided to go with what we knew, a Botejyu branch in Akasaka that was closest to us. Little did we know we'd be coming back to Akasaka again and again throughout our time in Tokyo, though mostly for Shichirin Yakiniku AnAn below.

Anyway, I didn't like our first visit to Botejyu years ago but in our desperation we gave it another chance just to relive our previous Japan experience. We ended up having a great meal there and went on to bring friends and family back, until the smoking in the restaurant became unbearable and stopped us from coming back. It seemed the restaurant had grown and the food vastly improved since we ate there last.

These were the seasonal offerings for the fall of 2015.

Tokyo Eats - Roppongi area Part VII

The last of the Roppongi food posts :(

Hubby and colleagues were super excited when Blue Bottle Coffee opened yet another branch in Roppongi (they're up to 6 branches in Tokyo now!), in the spanking new Tri-Seven Building across the street from Midtown. It made their daily coffee run much easier than, say, Omotesando (will post soon!). Hubby loved going there, and he loved to drag me along. I was more, umm, indifferent. Sure, I like coffee, but more so the flavor than the actual beverage, which can sometimes be too strong and bitter for my unsophisticated taste buds.

Tokyo Eats - Shinjuku area

Throughout our time in Tokyo, the majority of our visits to Shinjuku was to eat sukiyaki tabehodai (all you can eat hotpot) at Nabezo with a host of friends and visiting family. The remaining of the time was me exploring the Shinjuku Isetan and a few other shopping destinations, me meeting up for lunch and coffee with my old friend K., and our afternoon tea club hanging out at the Peak Lounge or the New York Bar of the Park Hyatt Shinjuku ^.^ So suffice to say we did a great injustice to the enormous and super dense Shinjuku and didn't explore it as much as we could and should have.

Tokyo Eats - Ginza area Part III

Wow, has it really been more than a year since my last Ginza post?! Anyway, here's the last of the Ginza series and a long post ahead. I'm almost through with the rest of the Tokyo food photos too. I guess I should be happy to finally be done with the gigantic photo backlog, but coming to the end of the Japan pictures makes me so sad and nostalgic :(

Mum-in-law visited us back in early April 2016 with her older sister, aunt D. Aunt D. was the one who took this pic, with me photo-bombing hubby and his mum ^.^

ALoft Hotel Taipei Zhongshan

Last September, having just one month left in Tokyo hubby and I decided to take a quick trip to Taipei just to visit our favorite eats. J. joined us and helped book our camp site: ALoft Hotel Taipei Zhongshan. It was centrally located and convenient, being just one block away from the MRT Zhongshan Elementary School Station (中山國小站).

Tokyo Eats - In the neighborhood Part V

The last of the neighborhood food photos, though not the last of the Tokyo Eats series as I'm still sorting through my photos.

Check out this beauty I spotted in a tunnel in my old neighborhood. The left wing tip had a small tear :(

Kinkatsu right outside of Kamiyacho Station serves up tantan men (aka dandan noodles) and other, erhhh, Japan-ized Taiwanese noodle soups. We walk by this place all the time but it was always crowded so we never went in. Then one night when we were bored with everything else and the place seemed vacant enough, we tried their tantan men. Really good, but holy hell it was salty. I thought I already eat too much salt (and I do!) but these noodles tasted like a block of salt! We never went back.

Afternoon Tea at The Lounge, Aman Tokyo, Part II

Back in July, our Tokyo afternoon tea club was taken breathless with the space and the atmosphere at The Lounge on the 33rd floor of the Aman Hotel Tokyo. So despite the chocolate overload in the afternoon tea service, we voted to come back for a second time in mid September for a last hoorah, just one more tea session before we all part ways and return home after a year in the capital of Japan. We figured it's been two months and their menu has probably changed, so it won't be the same death by chocolate as with the July session.

Tokyo Eats - Roppongi area Part VI

My god, how many food photos did I take?!? I finally made it to the first week of August in the photo backlog, and it filled up yet another Tokyo Eats - Roppongi area post! I guess it was because hubby worked there, and so I went there everyday to meet with him for lunch. That was how I ended up with lots and lots of photos of mostly food ^.^"

Tokyo Eats - In the neighborhood Part IV

More food in my former neighborhood, again, won't be the last as I'm still catching up on photos.

We didn't dine at the Atago Green Hills Forest Tower lounge as D&E got tired of the food and wanted to venture out. But still, over the new year (which was a long time ago, I know...), they actually served zouni, a traditional new year soup with mochi!

Tokyo Eats - Roppongi Area Part IV

More food in Roppongi, though probably not the last since I'm still waaay behind on photos. I'd thought to wait until I'm all caught up but the post will grow too long, so I'm posting what I have now, already pretty darn long as it is!

An art display at Midtown, along with even more photos of sakura that I didn't get to in the previous installment. I know, I'm posting spring photos in the fall and summer photos in the winter. Ha.