Yesterday, I had lunch with two girlfriends at Imperial Treasures Super Peking Duck. We totally pigged out. Ordered platters of dimsum, noodles and one WHOLE Peking duck.
We had a great time discussing and giggling away about dildos and vibrators, over delicious Peking duck and dimsum! 🙂
Quite a number of people have asked me for a samgyetang recommendation in Seoul. I am a big fan of samgyetang. Okay, I like the soup and chicken, not so much the glutinous rice that is stuffed inside the chicken. The soup is so hearty, especially during cold weather.
I learnt that samgyetang is a summertime specialty as the Koreans believe that summer is the best time of the year to consume samgyetang, because eating it then yields the most health benefits. There are even specific days during summer designated for eating samgyetang. This sounds like the perfect dish for hot-all-year-round Singapore.
I have not tried many samgyetang restaurants in Seoul, but of the few that I have tried, Tosokchon is my favourite. The restaurant, located in a charming hanok, is quite famous in Seoul.
I love the milky chicken broth that the restaurant serves. The broth is thick, robust and very tasty. It is soooo wonderful. I know that Tosokchon serves very good fried chicken too, but I haven’t gotten around to trying this dish. ‘Cos everytime I go to the restaurant, I must have a pot of samgyetang by myself. The huge pot of broth and chicken is more than enough to fill my stomach to the brim, leaving no space to eat anything else.
The restaurant serves a small cup of ginseng liquor together with the samgyetang (or sometimes, just before the soup is served) which diners are supposed to drink before eating the soup. I love the warm and fuzzy feeling that the liquor gives me.
Each time I get a request for a samgyetang recommendation, I have to root around the Internet to find out the exact directions to Tosokchon. I know how to get to the restaurant myself, but I do not know how to describe its location. I thought it would be useful and time-saving to blog about this restaurant here for easy reference should I get another request in future.
Tosokchon is just a short walk from the Gyeongbokgung Station. Directions are:
Take the subway to Gyeongbokgung Station (Subway Line 3)
Leave the station using Exit 2 and walk along the row of shops. The shops should be on your left and the main road on your right.
Turn left at the G5 convenience store and Tosokchon is about 50m ahead.
Long queues during lunch and dinner hours!
This is something I do every time I visit Japan – collect souvenir stamps of the places that I have visited in my travel guidebook. Or in a little cute notebook. Ink stamps can be found at certain places of interest, such as temples, museums and Japan Rail train stations, in Japan. Each stamp is individually designed for a particular place of interest, and is typically a sketch of the temple, museum or building that it represents.
Not every place of interest has an ink-stamp. So looking for the ink stamp has become like a little treasure hunt that I play (with myself) everytime I go to somewhere new in Japan. Japan never fails to bring out the inner-child in me. I will be running around trying to catch sight of a table holding an ink-stamp and ink-pad. If I don’t spot any, I will usually ask someone working in the place of interest using barely passable Japanese: “Stampu doko desu ka? And when I find an ink-stamp, I pray that there is ink in the ink-pad!
It makes me so happy whenever I manage to add a new ink stamp to my collection. Apart from the fun factor, these ink stamps make a really nice souvenir of the various places that one has visited in Japan.
I was very proud of my last collection of ink stamps which were kept in a copy of the Lonely Planet, collected painstakingly during a number of trips to various parts of Japan. We lent the guidebook to someone and it has not been returned to us. And we cannot remember to whom we lent the guidebook to! Argh.
Now, I have to re-build my collection of ink stamps. During my last trip in October, I collected ink stamps from a couple of temples in Kamakura, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and certain train stations in Tokyo in cute Rilakkuma and Jiji notebooks.
^ Harajuku JR Station
I read on the Internet that the JR East railway line has stamps in 77 stations, and thought that it would be super fun and cool to do a stamp rally in Tokyo. Travel around Tokyo on the subway to all the 77 stations and collect the ink stamps.
I wish we had something similar in Singapore. For example, we could organise a stamp rally which revolves around the tourist attractions in Singapore, and people who have collected a certain number of stamps would be entitled to a commemorative gift. I am pretty sure it will be a hit with children (and adults like me)!
Thanks to my bookish friends, I have recently been introduced to some good reads in children books and young adult fiction.
When I was a child, the storybooks that I favoured were Enid Blyton (such as The Secret Seven, Famous Five, Malory Towers, The Magic Faraway Tree, etc), Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators and Roald Dahl. I grew up on a literary diet of mystery and crime-solving tales, boarding school life, action and adventure stories. I read and re-read these stories, never growing sick of them.
The All-Of-A-Kind Family series is something that I would have loved reading when I was young, had I known of its existence then. Too bad we didn’t have the Internet in our time, or online bookshops, or book blogs so that we could get book recommendations, like how it is for me now.
Because the series is so wonderful, I highly recommend them to anyone, be it an adult or a child. There are 5 books in this series, starting with All-Of-A-Kind Family, followed by More All-Of-A-Kind Family, All-Of-A-Kind Family Uptown, All-Of-A-Kind Family Downtown and Ella of All-Of-A-Kind Family.
Unfortunately, it seems that most of these books, except for the first book, are out-of-print now. Pity ne. I managed to purchase the first book in the series from Kinokuniya, and borrowed three (out of four) sequels from a friend who had recommended me this series. So glad she kept the books with her all these years.
Written by Sydney Taylor at the turn of the century, the All-Of-A-Kind Family details the family life of a Jewish family and the growing up years of five sisters at the turn of the century in the East Side, New York City. The stories revolve around five sisters, and subsequently a brother, as well as their extended family.
These books gave me a glimpse into the day-to-day life of a Jewish family, and how they observe Jewish customs and religion. Having attended many years of Bible study, I know of the existence of important Jewish customs and festivals such as the Passover, Hanukkah, the Yom Kippur and the Sabbath, and that they eat kosher food. However, I don’t really know how the Jews go about observing their customs and festivals. These books do just that. Through the eyes of the children, I get an insight into the Jewish way of life, the steps that they take when observing major festivals, customary practices for marriages and child-birth, and the type of food that they eat during each festival. The books also illustrate important values such as frugality, responsibility, family love and honour, through the behaviour of the children, and how their parents discipline and guide them.
The writing is plain and concise. The stories about the children are so entertaining and delightful to read. The illustrations in the books are beautiful.
I am hoping that a re-print of this series will take place one day, and when that happens, I am going to buy the entire series for my bookshelves.
Before we left for Tokyo, a friend recommended a tempura restaurant called Tenmasa to us. The restaurant was featured on an ANA inflight programme and he said that the tempura looked very good.
I did some online research on the restaurant, and read that Tenmasa has been around for over 70 years. The restaurant has been run by three generations, from grandfather to father to son. It is now located in the Marunouchi Building near Tokyo Station, so it quite easy for us to find the restaurant.
We visited Tenmasa twice in the one week that we were in Tokyo. We really liked the food. It was very good. In terms of cost, I feel that the restaurant charges reasonably for the level of quality in the food that it serves. I have eaten tempura in Singapore that costs alot more than Tenmasa but is not half as good.
Tenmasa’s menu has set meals and ala-carte orders. The set meals come in three differently-priced options, but customers can add ala-carte orders to their set meals anytime. We tried the lowest-priced and mid-priced options during our two visits and a couple of ala-carte orders mid-way through the meal.
Tenmasa uses a very light batter in making its tempura. I could hardly taste any flour when I bit into a succulent piece of scallop, prawn or crab. Also, the oil that is used to cook the tempura is frequently changed by the chefs.
How it works at Tenmasa is this: the restaurant has three small dining rooms. Each room has a horseshoe-shaped table which sits between 8 to 10 guests, and is manned by one tempura chef, who cooks the tempura in the presence of the guests. Trays of fresh food waiting to be dipped into batter and then hot oil are laid out on the table-tops, and the chef will describe to you the food that he is preparing for you next.
I like this sort of cosy setting where one can chat with the chef, and listen to the conversations that are taking place around the table.
Now, for the food porn…! We ate alot more than that what is shown in the photos below. (Photos are a little orangy-yellow because of the lighting).
^ Ebi, prawns.
^ Kani (蟹), Hokkaido crab tempura. TBH’s favourite.
^ Hotate, scallops wrapped in nori.
^ Shirako tempura, cod-fish milt. This was fab, fab, FABULOUS! I was very fortunate that this was in season when I visited. It was piping hot and creamy. Tasted soooo good, especially with a pinch of salt.
^ The grated daikon was so sweet and delicious, so unlike our local radish which has a slight bitter taste. I ate most of the daikon that was served in a separate bowl, even though it was intended to be a condiment to put in the sauce, and not eaten on its own.
^ Mouth-watering good. Every item on the ala-carte trays looked so delicious, I wanted to eat all of them, but at the risk of having my cholesterol levels shoot above acceptable limits.
^ Sea-perch
^ Yuzu sorbet – my favourite Japanese dessert.
^ Asari, clams.
^ Like most Japanese meals, this ended with plain rice, pickles and miso soup, or ochazuke, or tendon, depending on which set meal one chooses. Dessert and coffee/tea are served after the rice course.
Tenmasa is definitely a restaurant that we will visit the next time we visit Tokyo. For those who are interested, this restaurant is located on the 35th Fl, Marunouchi Building. Except for New Year’s Day, Tenmasa is open from everyday: 11am – 2pm for lunch and 5pm – 10pm for dinner.
Last night, I had a very delicious North Indian dinner at a restaurant called Mustard in Race Course Road. It specialises in Punjabi and Bengali cuisine, which as I understand, uses mustard seeds and oil as key ingredients.
We got a little lost in Little India, and took a while to find the restaurant, which we eventually found after 45 minutes of wandering and driving around, working up an appetite in the meantime.
Like jogging (and idol-chasing), North Indian food is one of the few things which I started to enjoy only in the last couple of years. I used to associate North Indian with yoghurt-chickpeas-cucumber-mixed-in-rice, because that is usually what I see Indians eat at the foodcourts. The food didn’t look in any way appetizing.
Until I discovered the joy of baingan bharta (a spicy eggplant dish mashed with onions and tomatoes, peshawari naan (a slightly sweet naan baked with almonds and raisins), rogan josh (lamb curry), chicken masala and fish tikka. I am not a big fan of tandoori chicken because I find the roasted meat a little too dry for my taste. I prefer meat to be tender, cooked in a spicy and/or creamy sauce.
The food at Mustard is very good, especially the baingan bharta. We tried the restaurant’s specialities, which we had never eaten before in other North Indian restaurants: Chingri maacher malai curry, prawns cooked in a light green curry and served in a coconut shell, and maacher paturi, mustard fish wrapped in banana leaf (just like how otah is served). We also ordered the peshawari naan and one other naan (I cannot recall what is this) to go with the main courses and doi baingan, which is Bengali-style eggplant cooked in a yoghurt.
I enjoyed the prawn curry, as the gravy was fragrant and went very well with naan. I found the fish quite delicious, but the flavours could be a little too strong tasting for some folks. Doi baingan – not as tasty as baingan bharta.
Plenty of food for two very hungry ladies!
I am back…! JLPTとI4の試験を終わった！嬉しいです。
Over the last couple of weeks, I have been mugging for two Japanese tests. The JLPT N4 test and separately, an internal placement test conducted by my Japanese language school. Both tests require a substantial amount of preparation, and regretfully, I did not dedicate the time and effort to do so.
Anyway, the tests took place yesterday, and yeps, I am officially free from Japanese classes for a while. Until I decide to proceed to the next level in my language school. I am not quite sure if I should. It feels quite daunting, really. My foundation in the language at my level is still too shaky to move on to a more advanced level where the syllabus focuses on conversational Japanese. I can imagine myself squirming in my seat in class, hemming and hawing, stuttering un-grammatical sentences in broken Japanese, and feeling utterly embarrassed.
In the last couple of weeks, I had been frantically shovelling as many Kanji, vocabulary, verbs, verb conjugations, etc, into my brain as I could. That piece of muscle in my head has definitely shrunk, or worse, turned into fats, as it has demonstrated itself to be incapable of performing any “hard-core” memory work.
Clearly, I have gone past my shelf life for doing any sort of studying. I wonder how some people manage to do their Masters, MBAs, MPAs, etc, while holding down a full-time job and for others, juggling family commitments with everything else. So I harbour no ambitions to be a part-time Masters student. I know my limitations.
Any mugging that I did was done almost half-heartedly. I was battling a gazillion distractions everyday. Reading novels, Facebook-ing, playing Sims Social, watching dramas, etc. Generally anything and everything that prevented me from doing any kind of serious revision.
Some things about people just don’t change, no matter how old they get. Studying for these tests reminded me of the sort of student I was twenty years ago. Fidgety. Very short concentration span. Disorganised. Also, I am a ‘morning person’. Which means I do my best work in the morning, especially between 0800hrs and 1030hrs. So it is no use trying to hit the books at night after I get home from work.
I have never been a “last minute crammer”, because my brain just won’t take that sort of crap. It will go into a deep freeze whenever it detects that I am trying to pile it with tons of data at the eleventh hour. So there I was two days before the exam: in a semi-panicked state, tons of material left “un-memorised”, a frozen brain and an de-motivated spirit.
Experiencing the pre-JLPT test jitters was a little nostalgic, as it brought back memories of those long-ago school days. The JLPT exam was held at the Singapore Management University, in one of its seminar rooms. Wow, I felt young and like a student again. But no, I had absolutely no urge to return to my undergraduate days. Especially when that meant commuting to Boon Lay everyday.
I arrived at the exam venue early, and found myself a spot at the study areas, where hordes of exam candidates (young, no doubt) were doing their last minute revision. I had already given up studying so I just sat on a bench, sipping a cold soya bean milk, quietly observing the iPod-plugged in folks around me, and reminiscing my old school days. (Nowadays, universities have food kiosks, such as the likes of Jollybean, on their campus. Good life.) The scene felt surreal to me. It seemed only yesterday when I was in a similiar pre-exam scene in NTU.
So how did the JLPT go? In short, it went very badly. Nothing I studied for came out in the test. Which means that the reverse holds true as well. Almost everything that came out in the exam, I did not know, or had prepared for. When the results are released next March, I am pretty sure I have to re-take the test in July. I need a miracle here.
How did the internal placement test go? Slightly better than the JLPT. The questions were at least comprehensible to me. Anyway, I received my results today and I passed. Not with flying colours, but I passed.
So I am back to the question that I started out this post with. Do I move on to the next level, or not?
Decisions, decisions, decisions!
November is a month of birthday celebrations. Apart from my own birthday, I have quite a number of friends who are also born under the Zodiac sign of the Scorpio. If I don’t refer to my calendar, I might get some of the birth-dates mixed up.
I went for afternoon tea at the Four Seasons with my 7/11 Scorpio friend. I like having English afternoon tea, the traditional sort where tiny sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and jam and an assortment of cakes and pastries are served on a three-tier silver or gold stand.
It is such a nice, leisurely way of spending a couple of hours relaxing and catching up with friends.
I am not that fond of afternoon tea that comes in the form of a buffet. Somehow, the leisurely feel that comes with afternoon tea is diminished when I have to fetch my own food from a buffet table. Also, conversations are less likely to be interrupted if neither of us had to excuse ourselves from time to time to fetch more food.
The afternoon tea at Four Seasons is pretty good. More specifically, the scones are good. And the hotel serves clotted cream to go with the scones. For me, afternoon tea can be good only when it comes with good scones AND clotted cream.
The items on the three-tier tray as well as coffee/tea are refillable by the hotel staff who goes around to check on how quickly you are scoffing the lot. I find the ambience of the tea lounge to be very pleasant. The day that we were there, the lounge was neither too crowded nor noisy. I like that the tables are placed far away from each other such that so that the lounge did not have a cluttered feel, and more importantly, we did not have to listen to conversations going on at the next table.
I have been to the Goodwood Park Hotel and the Ritz Carlton for afternoon tea but have not enjoyed the experience enough to make a repeat visit. As for the Four Seasons, I dare say I will be going back quite soon.
Every time I am in Tokyo, I make it a point to visit the Sensoji temple at Asakusa. I don’t exactly know what is it about this place that draws me to it but a trip to Tokyo doesn’t seem complete without me going there.
For some folks, it could be a compulsory visit to Tsukiji market to eat a plate of sashimi or sushi for them to feel that their trip to Tokyo is complete. For others, it might be a visit to the Tokyo Tower.
Me, it is Asakusa. Specifically, the Sensoji temple.
Every time I visit the temple, I tell myself that THIS WILL DEFINITELY BE MY LAST VISIT! I am never going back again!
Because the place is so touristy, the crowds make me dizzy, and the incense smoke annoys me.
But I still go back time and again.
^ I can think of one reason why I like to visit the Sensoji temple. The Nakamise-dori shopping street. It is a stretch of small shops leading to the temple which sells souvenirs like the Maneki Neko, touristy knick-knacks and Japanese snacks.
I am always on the look-out for cute Japanese clay figurines of animals in the Zodiac signs and traditional wooden Japanese dolls. And these things can be found at Nakamise-dori.
I love browsing in these shops, looking through the piles of wares on display and wondering if I might find something interesting or silly to bring home or as gifts for friends and family.
Fridge magnets, the odd postcard, floral-printed pouches, Japanese clay figurines, dolls, etc. You never know.
Notwithstanding the touristy-ness of the place, I enjoy soaking myself in the atmosphere of street shopping and people watching. I like the bustling vibe of the place which is a different sort from the other places such as Shinjuku, Shibuya or Harujuku.
However, the shop-owners in this shopping street are some of the most unfriendly Japanese whom I have encountered in Japan. Glares, curt remarks, bad attitude, etc. I don’t even understand why I patronise some of these shops when the people running them are so un-welcoming.
But I still have to go back to Sensoji temple during my next visit to Tokyo because I have not tried agemanju, the famous fried azuki bun sold at a stall near the temple.
Despite having eaten bowls and bowls of ramen in Tokyo, I still have a craving for more ramen after coming back to Singapore.
Last week, I went to try this new place called Tonkotsu King located at the ground floor of Orchid Hotel, which is opposite the Tanjong Pagar Food Centre.
As its name suggests, Tonkotsu King sells Hakata-style pork broth ramen which I love to bits, as I cannot stop saying so. I thought that if it turned out to be good, I could get my regular tonkotsu fix at a place that is close to the offices of TBH and myself (though not for long).
I ordered the original all-in version which came with the following toppings – an egg, two slices of pork, black fungus and a gigantic piece of seaweed. On the table was a container of spicy beansprouts which customers could help themselves to.
I thought the broth was not bad. Robust, creamy-rich tasting without being salty. But it is still nowhere half as good as the one that we ate in Tokyo. Not enough OOOMPH.
What was off-putting about the ramen is the globules of artery-clotting fat floating in the broth. Seeing those fat globules greatly reduced my pleasure of drinking the broth.
I might return for another bowl whenever I get my tonkotsu cravings.
^ 東京ばななをたべるのが大好きです！ とても美味しい。東京へ行った時に、東京が一つの箱をかったんです。友達も東京へ行く時に、私に一つの箱を買ってくれます。
Tokyo Banana! It is very delicious. (Well, only if you like sponge cake and banana custard…)
They have quite a few variations of the Tokyo Banana but my favourite is the original version, which is just sponge cake filled with banana custard.
During my recent trip, I bought a box of 8 pieces and am still slowing savouring them. They come individually wrapped in the box and make great souvenirs especially when they are easily available at the train stations and airports.
During my first trip to Tokyo a decade ago, a friend had asked me to get her a box of Tokyo Banana without explaining that it was a Japanese snack. It is very famous in Japan but clearly, its fame had not yet reached me.
I thought it was a fruit. Bananas specially grown in Japan. I went on a wild goose chase hunting for bananas in the Japanese supermarkets until I discovered my folly while browsing in a Japanese snack shop in one of the main Tokyo train stations.
Tokyo Banana tastes especially good with hot coffee.
Isn’t the sky exceptionally lovely today? I snapped this photo with my iPhone.
It was a deep clear shade of blue with billowing clouds that were cottony white, very fluffy and beautifully formed.
The contrast of the blue sky and white clouds made me want to find an empty patch of grass, lie down and admire the sky. Unfortunately, I had a class to go to.
I have always wanted to visit the observatories in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building to enjoy the paranomic city views from the observation decks located in the north and south towers but never got around to doing so.
Since we were staying in a hotel just across the road from the building this time, there was hardly any reason not to to so. Best of all, entry to the observation decks is free.
^ The Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly Building and the ubiquitous Japanese salaryman in his black suit. Something about the look of this building reminds me of Star Wars.
^ View from the North tower. One can see Mt Fuji from this spot on a clear day. It was too bad we couldn’t catch a glimpse of the mountain on the day that we were up there.
^ View from the South tower. They say that the view at the south tower is better than the one at the north tower. Looks pretty much the same to me!
Both observation decks have shops selling souvenirs and cafes to fill one’s tummy and quench one’s thirst. I was pretty much distracted by the ongoing children’s activities at the observation deck in the South tower – some kids were making origami while others were sketching. There was an activity booth where they gave out blank postcards for one to apply ‘stamps’ of a plethora of leaves in various autumn colours. Even the adults (including me!) were happily ‘stamping’ away on their postcards.