A temple near my house. We go walking around the house often, and this is one of the places we’ve been.
A donguri nut on the ground. Autumn….
It’s just a small temple, but we could walk inside. There was a big bell which a monk will hit at 00:00 AM on the New Year’s day (Joya-No-Kane).
Hmmmm… beautiful!!
Yesterday we went to Nagahama city, a neighbouring city of where I live, to walk around the Kurokabe road.
It is a small pedestrian street with old shops and restaurant around. It’s a very old road.street. Now, it’s a famous tourist destination and I get to see many tourists coming here almost everyday, so the shops sell more like “souvenir” things.
The name “Kurokabe” literary means “black wall”. Most of the buildings on this street are with black wall. Because of the name, there are shops and restaurants selling “black” things, such as black curry, black rolled cake, and black donburi.
There are very nice museums and atelier/studio on this street including Kurokabe Glass Museum and Kaiyodo Figure Museum. The glass ware made here is very famous. You can see the studio through the window inside the glass shop. When I was there, a glass artist was making square vase. It was amazing. First, it was just a round transparent ball of glass, but then, it became yellow-red-green square shaped art. The studio looked very hot and the artist was working with half sleeve. It was pretty cold day yesterday and we’re wearing thick jackets and gloves.
There are many action figures and character toys in this building of figure museum. Famous music box shop is located inside too.
We had a bite at a bakery on this street. This bakery has been here since long time ago…
I had a bacon epi bread, and D had ham mayonnaise roll. We shared a melon-pan bread and a little box of banana au leit.
I love the crusty bread!! It was very hard to chew, but good exercise on jaw 
On the way home we stopped at Nagahama castle. It was freezing, so we just had a small stroll around the park, and head home.
Since I’m back to Japan I’ve noticed few things that made me think “wow….!” “Japan tte, sugoi ne”
I just want to list some of them here….
Eggs bought from a super market. A pack of eggs is sometimes ¥98 here. And, each egg has a sticker saying its expiry date. Wow.
A pack of cotton buds for baby bought from a 100yen shop. It contains 50 cotton buds, and they are individually packaged. And, there are instruction of how to open the package, and “made in Japan” printed on each one of them. Again, the pack is just ¥100. Wow.
Photos taken at a supermarket. Each section sells varieties of brands. One isle sells just sliced white bread, and one isle sells just Japanese green teas. Wow.
I found this at my house. A container for nikuman! Haha, it makes it easy to store one nikuman in the fridge, indeed. This can be a steamer to warm up nikuman in microwave, too.
A cup of instant udon noodle. It contains chunks of pork, abura-age (fried beancurd), carrot and spring onion. Is this an instant noodle? These ingredients even got crunchy texture. Oishi~
I don’t remember if public toilets in Perth are the same, but here in Japan, toilets have sink for little kids too.
And, handbag hooks inside the toilet is like this shape in Japan. Looks strange, but this is to prevent someone outside trying to steel the bag while you are peeing (from above the door). This crime happened so many times few years ago, and lots of public toilets use this type of hook now.
The restaurant was located just in front of Shiragaki train station. We couldn’t miss the place because there’re lots of big red flags around the restaurant saying “MATSUTAKE”. And there was loud music coming out from the restaurant.
Apparently, this place is very famous for ALL YOU CAN EAT matsutake course menu. Matsutake is only available during Autumn, so they serve crabs and fugu dishes in winter. All-you-can-eat as well.
There’re many photos of famous actors/comedians/sumo restler taken with the owner of this restaurant at the entrance. They came here to eat matsutake dishes! The place was all tatami-floored, and you sit on zabuton (cushion) and eat the food. Lucky we made booking – there’re so many people inside. Our table was upstairs.
Our couse menu was Matsutake and Ohmi Wa-gyu Beef Sukiyaki with Matsutake Gohan (seasoned rice with matsutake), Matsutake Dobin-mushi (seasoned steamed matsutake), and dessert. Meat, matsutake, vegetables for sukiyaki, eggs, rice were can be ordered as much as we wanted.
We were expecting them to bring warishita (sukiyaki sauce) to pour into the pan, but at this restaurant we actually cook by yourself at the table. There were sugar, cooking sake, soy sauce and their home-made sukiyaki sauce next to the pan.
First, sprinkle sugar on the bottom of the pan, then place wa-gyu beef. Pour soy sauce and sukiyaki sauce over the meat, and eat the meat first – by dipping into raw egg.
OH MY GOSH…. The meat was so tender, and delicious!!! I hadn’t eaten such delicious beef for a long time!!!
Then add other ingredients such as matsutake, tofu, other mushrooms and Chinese cabbage.
We ordered lots of wa-gyu beef and matsutake to top up. Many times.
And lots of rice too.
Wa-gyu was great, and Matsutake was also great! Great fragrance, and very thick, dense body. The texture was amazing.
I loved the chopstick stand (racoon shaped Shigaraki ware), and they were selling many kinds of souvenirs downstairs, so we bought few things for ourselves. My dad bought matsutake to take home, and my brother bought some sweets. I bought the Shigaraki ware chopstick stand.
They gave us a bag of gift when we left. It was part of the course menu deal. And, because we bought some souvenir, we could do the garapon lottery (You could win a prize in a lottery by turning a small round machine. The prize depends on a colour of the ball dropped from the hole of the machine). We did 4 times, but didn’t get big prize. They gave us packs of sweet chestnuts and bananas for thank-you.
The food was very very nice! And the service was great too. My dad loved the place, and he said we’ll come back here again on Christmas. Around Christmas they do all-you-can-eat crabs and fugu course meal. Despite the amount and quality of the food, the price was not that expensive. That’s amazing too.
As it was D’s birthday, my dad and brother took us to one of the most historical cities in Shiga – Shigaraki and Koga. Shigaraki is famous for its pottery and stoneware (wiki), and Koga is an area where ninja used to live in old era (wiki). The purpose of going there was to have matsutake (the most expensive, the most delicious, the most rare mushroom in Japan) dishes in Shigaraki, and visit ninja house in Koga.
First, we stopped at one of Shigaraki-ware store in Shigaraki. There’re so many shops selling stonewares in this area. The most common Shigaraki-yaki is tanuki (racoon dog), but there are many more… including koalas and frogs.
The small ones are around ¥3000, and the big ones are around ¥400,000. I’m not sure how much the biggest one (around 3M) is… I don’t think anyone can bring it home!
The souvenir shop sells very cute souvenirs… tanuki-shaped sweets and chocolates.
After having browse around this shop, we still had time until our Matsutake lunch reservation at a restaurant, so we headed to Koga (Kouka). It was just 10 minutes drive from Shigaraki.
I remember coming here when I was little. My dad took us here. And, I remembered it was a big area which has lots of trick inside the houses which ninja used to use when enemies attacked them. But, actually, this ninja palace is just someone’s house. It’s bit hard to find….
There’re some other tourists visiting here when we arrived. We paid the entrance fee, and had browse inside.
You can hire ninja costume (¥500 for 10 minutes).
You can relax here and have hot green tea.
You can practice throwing shuriken) here 
Many ninja dolls inside the house…. They freaked me out.
The tools and sword ninja used to use were on display.
The owner of this house started talking about ninja, and showing the tricks inside the house. I couldn’t take photos, but they’re pretty cool. Many pitfalls and hidden panic rooms. And, after hearing the story of ninja, I found that ninjas were not like what I imagined at all. They didn’t kill people for no reasons – what they did was mostly just escape from enemies. It was so interesting to see inside the pitfall and underground tunnel. (website)
After this, we headed to Shigaraki again to have Matsutake….
(continued)
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