“Day 2 (Part 3): Street food in Asakusa + an owl! (11/11/19)”

After having those amazing pancakes from Benitsuru, I walked a very short 2 minutes to hit up the next spot around these parts – Yukari!

This is another spot that Paolo from Paolo FromTokyo (as part of his Tokyo Street Food Asakusa Top 10 Hidden Backstreet Tour | Fluffiest Japanese Pancakes Ever! youtube vid) recommended that I had to stop by and try, especially since Paolo himself is a HUGE karaage (aka fried chicken) fan! Since I myself am also a big karaage fan, I couldn’t resist and had to try this place out! FRIED CHICKEN HELL YEAH AIN’T A TIME IN THE WORLD WHERE THIS IS NOT APPROPRIATE.

There were some decent choices right off the bat, and I’m super glad that they have an english menu! My initial thought was that I would order one of each from the menu, but given the fact that I just had a decent sized breakfast shortly before, I gotta employ the following strat (short for strategy):

~ The player’s strategy #2 ~> Try multiple places during the day but don’t get too much of one kind of food/thing from each place – think of the day as a sample platter so that you can eat as much variety as possible. ~

It’s really hard not to eat more of one thing, especially since the quality of food here in Japan is just something else so far.

Anyway, I ended up getting both (1) Kari-Momo (¥240), and (3) Garlic (¥260)! A good ¥500 for a decent amount of karaage? SIGN. ME. UP.

Although I had to wait for about 10 minutes for some FRESH karaage to come out of the kitchen, it was well worth the wait.

As expected, both the Kari-Momo and the Garlic Karaage were delicious! They were fresh, hot, tender, juicy, man… just the whole nine yards. I definitely got my fried chicken fix (for now haha!). The way Yukari made these karaage remind me of 鹽酥雞 (yan su ji – or Taiwanese Fried Chicken), a very familiar style of fried chicken that is really easy to eat, especially with using skewers and eating them like you’re eating Satay or something!

Next stop on the list is Suzukien Asakusa (which is well known for their matcha tea gelato, oh and their green tea!), but before I do – I passed by Don Quijote in Asakusa, which is an awesome discount chain store that is quite famous around Japan. Unfortunately, I didn’t go inside but I could definitely tell that there were quite a number of people shopping there and browsing around.

It was a short 9 minute walk from Yukari to Suzukien (This was also recommended by Paolo from the same aforementioned youtube vid from earlier!). It’s an awesome, old-school matcha store, and they have a collaboration partner named Nanaya (ななや), a Matcha Sweets factory in Shizuoka.

From hearing a lot about how this place is known to have the strongest matcha in the world, I was eager to enter and see what they have to offer! When I entered, I looked to my left and saw the following:

D-D-D-D-DAYEUM… so many different matcha flavors (ranging from No. 1 to No. 7). I was so tempted to get multiple flavors (but that would’ve been quite a lot of gelato to consume). Originally, I had a thought to ask them in Japanese whether I could try a sample of each one…but given that people ahead of me didn’t really do that (and I wasn’t quite sure if that is an acceptable social norm to ask for free samples here via gelato/ice cream places in Japan), I decided to just pick and choose one of the flavors out of the seven.

I figured that choosing the middle ground amongst the 7 flavors would be the ideal option, or as I would usually say – THE PLAYER’S CHOICE. CHYEAH! GET IN MAH BELLY. I was hyped for this! I don’t remember exactly, but I believe it was ¥350 for a single scoop – not too bad, and I would pay a bit more anyway for quality like this.

The kicker to getting a scoop of the matcha gelato was that they provided complimentary green tea! That is so sick. The gelato itself is very nice and delicious – I loved how it wasn’t too sweet (which is usually how I like my desserts anyway), and you can definitely taste the matcha too. It’s not as strong and bitter as I thought a No. 4 would be, but it was strong enough and I can’t imagine how bitter the No. 7 Level is. I also liked how green the gelato is! (Green is my favorite color in general, and it was just a pleasing green color to see).

Onto the next stop! Originally, I was aiming to go to Sharaku (from Paolo FromTokyo (as part of his Tokyo Street Food Asakusa Top 10 Hidden Backstreet Tour | Fluffiest Japanese Pancakes Ever! youtube vid), and I was trying to find it on google maps too, but with a combination of losing track of where I was in Asakusa (while spacing out a bit just because I was a bit overwhelmed at how many different types of shops and things to try and eat here in Asakusa), and just settling for another place that has Tennan Taiyaki anyway, I ended up at this location instead (via the picture above) called Naruto Taiyaki Honpo (Ohhhhh that’s right! it has the name Naruto in it too…like the anime! :D). I figured this place is also a decent option to try Tennan Taiyaki since there was a line for it!

~ Side Note #8: Taiyaki is a Japanese fish-shaped cake that contains filling such as red bean paste! Tennan Taiyaki is taiyaki that is made from an individual cast iron press, which is quite common here in Japan. ~

They had two choices of filling to choose from – Red Bean, and Sweet Potato. The sweet potato is an interesting choice since back in California, given my previous experience with having this similar dessert but it’s a Chinese style cylindrical shape cookie cake thing (I totally forgot what we call it in Chinese to be quite honest haha…) in which shops usually offer either red bean or custard.

I ended up getting the OG flavor, red bean paste! It was fresh, nice, and hot off the iron griddle too! In the theme of how I like my desserts in general, it was just the right amount of sweetness – not too sweet! It also had a nice crispy outside, which compliments very well to the soft inside red bean paste filling that just made this delicacy ever so satisfying. This costed just ¥180, which is a decent price for a quality tennan taiyaki like this.

While I was still around the Nakamise Shopping Street, I managed to pass by this one place called Jungle Cafe Owl no Mori (a cafe and a place where they had a variety of owls that y’all can play and chill with – https://owlnomori.net/about-us). I wasn’t planning on going inside, but I did want to take a picture of this beautiful owl (I don’t quite 100% remember her name, but I believe it was Haruka)

The lady who was supervising Haruka had a sign that said you can take pictures of the owl if you donate ¥100, which I did since I really wanted to keep this as one of my photo memory in my travel here in Japan. Once I donated the ¥100, the lady proceeded to direct the owl to glide/hop onto this small patch of grass as you see here – so cool!

Dang it! it took quite a bit of time to try to have Haruka pose straight into my phone’s camera (and the lady was trying to help me get a good straight picture as well!), but this was the best I could’ve done – oh well no worries haha I still enjoyed taking these pictures. I gotta say though… her feather and wing structure could not have been more majestic (granted that I haven’t met too many owls in person throughout my life). Absolutely stunning.

~ Side Note #9: There were still some places that I wanted to hit up around Asakusa (especially places like Momotarou for their dango [which is a Japanese dumpling and sweet made from mochiko – akin to mochi] + Yasubee for their Yakitori [a Japanese type of skewered chicken] – these places have been mentioned in Paolo’s aforementioned Asakusa vid from earlier); however, given the other places I wanted to hit up today, especially in both Akihabara and Shibuya, my executive decision was to call it good in Asakusa for the day, and take the subway from there on. ~

I am well aware that I mentioned in the last post that I was going to talk about my adventure in both Akihabara + Shibuya as well, but since there’s quite a bit to talk about that part as the second half of the day, I figured this would be a good stop and I’ll talk about that 11/11/19 in the next post!

For now, here are a few pictures as a preview of my next post.