Shiki no Sato (Four seasons park)

I haven't showed what the nature in Japan looks like in a while, so I came to this park called "Shiki no Sato" last Sunday. You can enjoy looking at different wild flowers and etc. in the four seasons respectively, but I think the best months to come here should be April and June, when cherry blossoms and irises bloom. 

 

I had to drive for half an hour to reach this park. This park is in a city called "Moriya", and some people live in this city to commute to Tokyo via the line called "TX".

It was about 30 degrees Celsius on the day, and this park officially announced the start of this iris festival on June 7.

I think there were four colors of irises in this park, and the two of them were these purple and white ones.

And a third color was light purple.

I liked this yellow irises the best, and most people were taking more pics of this color than the others. 

There was a place to take a rest at. And the trees that surround this place are called "Yanagi" in Japanese, or willow in English.

This park is even known to many people who live outside this city and some scenes from a drama called "Haru ga kita (Spring has come) " were shot here.

On the premises of this park there was this waterwheel. The red flowers around the waterwheel are called "Tsutsuji" or azalea.

Tandoor (Indian Restaurant)

Basically almost all the Japanese care for rice and curry, and I'm one of those people. I introduced a Go! Go! Curry! that was in Akihabara, and its curry was similar to the rice and curry we cook at home. But in my book authentic Indian curry is really different from those curry. For the past few years, we saw an increase in the number of Indian curry restaurants in my city and I've tried several of them. 

You might think I had lunch on this day, but actually I had dinner. In the Kanto region, in which my city is, the sun sets around 7pm in June. So when I got out of this restaurant, it was still bright enough not to turn on the headlights of my car.

I saw a tapestry of Ganesha, which is one of Hindu deities. He is said to bring prosperity to your business. His head is just like an elephant's and he has four arms. He is also worshipped as the deity of academic achievements, so you might need a picture of him when you are in or graduate from school or college. 

As some of you might know, this is naan and it should be baked with a tandoori. When it was put on the table it was so hot and juicy. 

And as an additional dish, I ordered this tandoori chicken. I think any authentic Indian restaurants serve really good dishes, but honestly I often feel hungry only with curry and naan.

The curry I ordered was "butter chicken curry". I don't want to exaggerate, but I have to say this curry was better than any other I had ever tasted. I ordered the curry to be mildly spicy, so I wouldn't have needed any soft drink, but I also enjoyed this coffee.

I didn't think I had to speak English at this restaurant, but the waiter couldn't seem to get my Japanese, so I relied on the lingua franca, namely English. >.<

Takarajima

I think Korea is renowned for its Yakiniku or grilled beef, but we Japanese also have it from time to time. There are Yakiniku restaurants called "Anrakutei", "Manyuutei" and this "Takarajima" in my neighborhood. I've heard that Americans like to hold a BBQ party at home, and I've also taken part in BBQ parties in the past, but only several times. I think this is because not all the Japanese have BBQ grills, and we basically think grilled beef should be usually had at a restaurant. 

There are 3 restaurants of this chain "Takarajima" or Treasure island in my neighborhood. Its grilled beef sets are very reasonably priced, and you can have a kalbi set with rice, soup and soft drinks for only 9.7 dollars.  "Kalbi" is marinated beef short ribs in Korean soy sauce.

We were offered seats at the table at first, but we noticed they were in the smoking area. So we asked the waiter if we could have seats in the non-smoking area and we eventually settled at these "Zashiki" seats. You should sit on the floor with your legs folded here.

I'm sure you're already familiar with this "drink bar". As I told you before, you can have unlimited refills of soft drinks with this machine without bothering the waiters, since you have to refill yourself.

And besides the soft drinks, you can have two kinds of soup whose price was included in the set I ordered. I had this egg soup. The other choice was "Wakame (seaweed) soup".

The two things you see on the nearside dish are "Korean pickle (left)" and "namuru (right)". The latter is basically bean sprouts soaked in cooking oil with garlic.

You have to cook your beef on the grill yourself. You can fine-tune the heat with a knob under the table. My set had 200g of kalbi beef, but since my friend couldn't finish all of his beef, I was given the leftover and I was finally full.   

Genki Sushi

I prefer sushi bars over Kaitenzushi just because I like everything to be authentic. But from time to time I want to have sushi at Kaitenzushi restaurants for two reasons: a) Every sushi is very cheap, b) You can have irregular sushi that are not available at a sushi bar. So my friends and I decided to have lunch at this "Genki Sushi" this Sunday. You know, Genki means "fine" in English, so when you see your Japanese friends, you can ask them "Genki? (How are you?)".

As far as I know there are several Kaitenzushi restaurants in my city, and I'd like to introduce one by one in future. The two Kaitenzushi I've introduced were "Toppi" and "Hamazushi".

Clockwise from left: sardine, bonito, and salmon. They weren't on the same dish but I put them together so that you can see them in one picture.

"Aburi Benizake" or roasted sockeye salmon. These were pretty yummy, and I had another dish of this. I'm liable to have salmon at sushi restaurants since it includes the nutrition called Omega 3.

When i was in the USA, I had some very strange sushi, but you can have hamburger at this sushi restaurant. I guess it was for kids.

I felt hungry after having all those sushi, so I ordered this Udon. Not that you can have Udon at every sushi restaurant, but this was more delicious than those sushi. I didn't come here for Udon though. You can see Tempura called "Kakiage" on top of it.

And I had this dessert that had pieces of orange, cherry and yogurt pudding. You can have some kinds of cake as well here, and the reason why they offer such sweet things might be they want children as customers. Children alone can't come here, so they bring their parents as additional customers. I could call this Genki Sushi a "family" sushi restaurant.