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Author: LostViivi
I'm a little lost in this big world. I find my home in unknown streets and forgotten forest paths. As passionate as I am about traveling I'm also about writing, books, and movies.I don't know where this writing blogs thing is going so anything is possible.
More Food in Japan
Go check out my first food in Japan post from HERE.
So like the first post this is just pictures of food and me scribbling nonsense. I hope you enjoy!
I admit being surprised how tiny Japan’s ice cream selection was. As country with so many odd and cool things I though there would be strange looking/tasting ice creams. Or maybe I have just got used to too good. I mean in Finland we have so many different flavors and brands.
From some places (like Ueno park’s hidden ice cream vendor) I was able to find amazing sundaes. In the left picture you see pink slush and soft ice cream. We have those two in Finland too but this was my first time seeing them together. -Or maybe I just spend too much time not leaving my home when I am back at Finland…-
I absolutely hated strawberry milk. I am sorry everyone. The idea of it sounds sweet and delicious but I couldn’t even drink it after tasting. Maybe I am somehow broken? Is there any one who has tasted it? Did you like it?
The pastry above was one of my favorite breakfasts to buy from nearby bakery in Tokyo. It reminded me of hot dog but it had stick where you were able to hold it. Tokyo’s bakeries had so many other delicacy that even one blog post wouldn’t have enough space to contain them all.
In addition to bakeries there were countless amount of different cake shops, teahouses and sweet shops. I ate so much and so often that it’s like miracle how I still fitted in airplane when coming back home. Actually I lose weight while in Japan. Even when eating a lot of unhealthy food the normal food was light when compared to the things I nprmally eat in Finland.
Avocados have been big thing for a while but only at Japan I grew to love them. Avocados and rice go together perfectly. At home I add soy sauce and wasabi when I am feeling home sick back to Japan. I even bought rice cooker to make the rice more Japan like. -The best purchase I have done in long time.-
One taste I miss from Japan that I can’t have at home is matcha. It’s powdered green tea. My Japanese friend took me to traditional matcha teahouse in Tokyo. According to her there are strict rules how to make and drink matcha tea. As foreigner no one however expects you to follow them.
The matcha isn’t just in teas. In Starbucks you can order matcha frappuccino and even candies (for example Kitkat) comes as matcha flavor. It’s in sushi, cakes and probably anything you can think of. At first I didn’t like the matcha’s taste but after my first month in Japan it kind of stuck on me. Now I am missing it.
I don’t really now what ingredients they use to those small cakes that you can see above. I think it was red bean paste inside of it, but I am not sure. I can’t speak the language so I couldn’t ask anyone. However the main point is it was delicious!
If you don’t eat noodles while in Japan you haven’t really had the whole Japanese experience! Rice and noodles are the food you should eat. And sushi. And so many other things. Okay I am going to change that sentence. You should eat as much as you can while in Japan or you haven’t had the whole Japanese experience!
Convenience store food is the love of my life. Cheap, tasty and easy to find. While getting lost in the city I usually stopped to buy something and found beautiful place to eat it.
Today’s last pic is crepe. Looks sweet, right? I hope you enjoyed my food pics and chatter.
See you next time!
With travel passion,
Neidotta
Grutto Pass – Tokyo Cheaply
Grutto Pass costs 2 000 yen (in 2016, about 16€) and with it you can visit most of the Tokyo’s museums and sightseeing attractions. It’s valid for two months starting from the first use and you can buy it from the most of museums and places where you can use it. You can also buy it in set with day train ticket. When buying the pass you get small notebook of places where you can use it or get discounts (and it is in English or at least was when I bought mine in 2015).
http://www.rekibun.or.jp/grutto/pdf/grutto_pass2016.pdf
From the link above you can find places where the Grutto Pass is valid in year 2016. Below the ones I went and liked the most…
tomatoes, you know, are real
that is, if they remain tomatoes
if they try to be melons, however,
they then became fakes
though everything and everyone is real
in their own way,
it seems we always try so hard to become fakes
-Mitsuo Aida
Mitsuo Aida Museum
Free of charge with Grutto pass. Without the Grutto pass 800 yen. Even if the poems are at Japanese are they beautiful to look and every poem is translated.
Ueno Zoo
Free of charge with Grutto pass. Without the Grutto pass 600 yen. Go and see pandas and other cute animals!
Tokyo Sea Life Park
Free of charge with Grutto pass. Without the Grutto pass 700 yen. Who doesn’t love aquariums?
Miraikan
Free of charge with Grutto pass. Without the Grutto pass 620 yen. The national museum of emerging science and innovation. From the first look it may seem like museum for children but it’s a lot more. Go there to see robots and space ship.
Shitamachi Museum
Free of charge with Grutto pass. Without the Grutto pass 300 yen. Get to know how Japanese people lived in the past. They have free English guided tours and you can even get free fortune like the one above.
National Museum of Nature and Science
Normally 620 yen but with Grutto pass you get 100 yen discount. This museum is huge and full of things to see. For example 360 theater, dinosaur bones and information of japanese nature. I recommend for science and nature students.
Should I buy Grutto Pass?
My opinion is yes. If you are going to spend more than day or two in Tokyo then definitely yes. You don’t need to go many places before Grutto pass pays itself back.
Also was fun how people always commented that I must be professional tourist because I have the Grutto pass. Apparently normally non Japanese speaking people don’t know about Grutto pass. Using it made me have many funny conversations with museum guides and other local people.
I hope me sharing my experience with Grutto pass makes someone else to safe their money! For me staying over month in Tokyo it saved a lot of money and made me go places I maybe wouldn’t have gone with out the free admission.
Follow my blog to read more of my adventures!
With love and passion,
Neidotta
Travel Diary: Montpellier & Paris pt.4
Day 11: The art of canceling plans
We meant to do a lot. Only two days left and there’s still much to see. We ate breakfast and just decided to not do anything. Unexpected decision right?
My opinion is that even when traveling the most important thing is to know yourself. When you are tired and need free time from tourist life just take it. Cancel all of your plans and just be. This is what happened to us. We had seen and done too much and it was time to rest.
Day 12: Art, shopping and bye Montpellier!
Our last day in Montpellier had dedicated to visiting museum Fabre. People told us it takes whole day to explore this museum and let me tell you that it’s not joke. The place is huge. Even one day isn’t enough if you want to see everything carefully.<
There is a lot of old art pieces. Some from famous painter and some from unknown ones.<
And then there is modern paintings and everything between. Also statues and changing special exhibitions.
At the end of our museum visit we started to be too tired to even properly admire the art. However the museum was amazing and I recommend it to everyone! Well you get lost easily but the staff are nice and always ready to help.
After this we did last souvenir shopping and then went back to our apartment. Our last night at Montpellier and I knew I would miss this city too.
Day 13: Hi Paris! And we got sick…
We left Montpellier before the sunrise and said our goodbyes to the sleeping city. We sat quietly in train both tired and at least I already missing the place I had called home the last two weeks.
When we finally arrived at Paris bad weather welcomed us. It started to rain when walked towards our hotel. Both of us were feeling a little bit sick and the recipe for disaster was almost ready. Our time in Paris would soon turn o nightmare…
.
After taking nap in our hotel we decided to start the day. It was only a couple of kilometers to the Picasso museum. Well it was two kilometers too much. I was feeling sick but I have got used to doing things even when feeling bad. But when we were in the museum my sister started to look really pale and almost fainted.
I took her to the cafe in museum (very expensive and not even good food…) After that I took her to the closest metro station and send her back to the hotel. Well at least we didn’t pay for the museums because under 26 years old Europeans get in free.
I have always loved metros and Paris’ metro isn’t exception. There is so many lines and ways to go. It took a while for me to understand the map because it’s already been over half year from the last time I used metro. In the end I found Les Halles shopping mall without problems.
The last time I visited Les Halles was year ago and before the horrible Paris’ attacks. I knew there would be more security than the last time but the guards and security measures still surprised me. There was security people in every door with their metal detectors and other security things.
My visit was still pleasant. I got flash back to Japan when visiting Muji and spend too much time in Forever 21. My trip did stop when I got really sick… I didn’t visit even half of the shops before I had to go back to the hotel.
Rest of the day we just sat on the hotel room and rested. Fun trip to Paris… right?
Day 14: Goodbye France!
Guess how it feels to be in Paris one day and be so sick you just decide to go airport and pass the opportunity to see the capital of romance. With heads down we left our hotel and took the long train journey towards airport.
After waiting spending six hours in airport we flew away from lovely France and headed towards home.
Because I didn’t have any interesting stories in this post there’s some more photos for you:
Thank you for reading and I will write soon!
Sincerely,
Neidotta
Travel Diary: Montpellier pt. 3
Day 8: Introverted traveler problems
Montpellier is so amazing city! Here couples in love, drug traffickers and lost tourists all fit in small park. So lovely old city where everyone live together in harmony.
Today I had my first full day with my sister to spend in the city. The morning went wandering around the old part of Montpellier.
We tried to find Place du Peyrou because the rumor told in Sundays there would be antique market. Well even one seller didn’t show up. That little set back didn’t dispirit us. Between sun and small rainy moments we navigated towards La Panacee. Using map and walking circles didn’t make us look like tourists at all! The museum was kind of hard to find but in the end my skillful map reading (and iPhone) helped us there.
The exhibition Anatomie De L’Automate. I can’t even describe it so I leave it like that. However I fell in love with the museum. It’s build around patio and in the upstairs they have artists’ residence.
After seeing this free kind of odd exhibit the museum’s restaurant attracted our attention. We even went outside once and come back inside because it seemed so scary to go and order. In the end we were able to ask the price of two people eating. 16E. And with that you got everything from appetizer to dessert and drinks.
Of course we did eat there. The food was amazing and even my -I don’t eat meat- sister liked it. The only problem was we never found the drinks beside coffee and cacao.
As introverted traveler this struggle is familiar for me. We definitely couldn’t ask where to find the drinks. After settling to our fate (and enviously looking boys next to us drinking their fresh orange juices) we continued our day with full stomachs.
Then we tried to enter shopping mall and walked around the small streets but soon noticed strange thing. Every place was closed. Literally every shop and most of the restaurants and cafes had disappeared.
We then decided to leave back home tired but happy after day full of new experiences. While sitting in full tram and talking to each other happened something fun.
My sister can understand some french. Of course no one knows it and when we talk Finnish everyone assumes we can’t understand them. Well I can’t but luckily I have great sister who can translate for me.
So we are sitting in tram and facing the back wall and three boys leaning on it. Of course they realize we aren’t locals but what they don’t think of is that we would understand when they talk about us.
So just tip for everyone. Always wait for the unexpected and don’t underestimate other people. Some people can speak more than one language.
Day 9: Let’s go see the sea!
I had googled in advance how to get into the beach using public transportation. Everything sounded so easy in internet but of course the reality wasn’t that simple. Or it would have been if we had just used the tram and walked the remaining three kilometers.
We trusted blindly to the instructions in Montpellier’s internet page and tried to use bus. We went to the place the bus was supposed to leave but never found the bus stop. As unlucky traveler that didn’t discourage me but I found new way for us to use.
So we traveled with tram towards the beach and started to walk. Halfway there we found bus stop that said there would have been cheap bus from the last tram stop to any part of the beach. We decided to use it when coming back and continued walking.
The walk was long but worth it. I have always loved seas and this beach and mystical stormy weather blew my mind. Everything looked so beautiful and there was stones and seashells everywhere.
My sister loves taking photographs so we were walking slowly and she was filming and snapping pics constantly. I didn’t know should I walk watching the ground so I could pick up pretty stones or look up and see the fascinating sea and sky. I ended up doing both.
After a while we eat our snacks on picnic style and admired the sigh in front of us. There was almost no one but us. Apparently it’s not beach weather yet for french.
When traveling back home and Montpellier’s centrum, we decided to go shopping. So we ended up going to Odysseum (Shopping mall/entertainment place). First thing we had to do was find food. After long seeking we found big hamburger place and the waitress welcomed us warmly. The foods looked good and everything seemed fine. We waited for the waitress come and to take our orders. We waited and waited and waited. She never came.
We were starting to panic. Should we go somewhere to order. Or should we just wait. As shy travelers asking help just wasn’t option. Then in the end we decided to sneak out of the restaurant. We only ate smoothies and bread that evening.
Day 10: City like art gallery
We used this day to walk around the old streets and do some shopping. I did buy cute shoes and book but I wasn’t really feeling like shopping. So in the end we just walked around and spend day at home.
In Montpellier you don’t need to even visit art museum to see paintings. The city is full of street art. Because I don’t have anything else to talk about (and this post is too long already…) here is some pics of the street arts:
PS. I’m sorry I haven’t posted for long time but I have been sick lately 😦
Endless Path Ventures