hk day 4

Woke up to the beautiful view of the bay area from my uncle’s place. Thus begins day 4 of our HK holiday.

View from the window. Could see the junkboats going about their business and meandering around the breakwaters. :

hk day 2

Woke up to the cold air of the city. Took a couple of pictures of the view from Panda Hotel. Really beautiful. Here begins day 2 of our HK journeys.

mouldy morn

Fuckk. My Ace’83s have been mould infested =( Spent the morning trying to clean the damn spores.

Sushi Kikuzawa

For our lunch, we decided to head down to Sushi Kikuzawa. Stella discovered this about two weeks back, and we’ve been looking forward to try it. Apparently it serves really good sushi and sashimi, sits a maximum of 12 and is owned and run by a japanese chef. I’m sold already.

Us at the train station :

View from outside. Foooood! :

The chef, Kikuzawa-San at the preparation counter. You can see the slabs of raw fish that are contained in the cold fridge in front of the table. The ambience felt pretty traditional, and with all the hais that were ringing out from behind the counter, you know you’re at the right place.

We were first given a sashimi platter as starters for the buffet. One would have to pay if you wanted another plate. The fish was really fresh and you could taste the sweetness of the salmon. I’m not a big fan of tuna (toro), but I found this one really good too.

Some light soup with chicken and vegetables. This was light and refreshing.

Chawanmushi. Really nice. It wasn’t as salty as the ones you would usually get in other restaurants, but it was light and delicious nonetheless.

While we were having our starters, the sushi had already started arriving as and when the chef finished making them. Since the nature of the blogpost is linear, I’ll just have to pretend that they arrived after the chawanmushi. heh. Below is the sushi list at the back of the menu, and there are other dishes inside as well, but we got full just attempting to eat the different kinds listed below.

Hotate – Scallops scorched with a mini flame gun. Awesome. You could taste the difference in textures between the scorched top and the raw bottom. Nice.

Unagi and amaebi

Ika and Shake

Stella. Haha no she is not a kind of sushi although she looks quite tasty =P

Ikura. I love this. I think we had two of these. It really melts in your mouth.

Bonito. Frankly I didn’t really like this one. Felt that it tasted a bit too pungent for my liking. I’m fine with the bonito shavings that you often see curling up on takoyaki.

Swordfish. This was really good. The ones I often have somehow either taste too salty or fishy. This one was just right and it just went down well.

Fugu – the famous dangerous pufferfish. Again, this didn’t do it for me, and I think Stella agrees with me. We were wondering what all the hype was about and unfortunately this turned out a little blah. Maybe the fear of death makes things taste or feel a little better. haha.

Natto. A kind of fermented bean dish that is apparently only found in Japan. Heard that it was kinda smelly but decided to try it anyway. Haha well….it did taste pretty nasty, but Stella seemed to like it. Maybe I’ll try it again if I ever go there again. Good experience though, I’m glad I tried it.

A little late, but we decided to order some sake. Pretty refreshing and we were able to go on with another round of sushi.

Takoyaki.

Another round of sushi – Unagi and Tai I think. I still can’t get enough of unagi. Good stuff.

I ordered this salted squid cold dish, and damn, it was salty! I don;t know what the sauce was, but it was pretty pungent and fishy. Stella and I think that some squid ink was mixed in with that. I managed to finish the thing in the end though, since it wasn’t a lot anyway. Washed it down with sake.

Finally, for dessert, jellies. I had the peach and Stella the lychee one. It was a nice roundup to the whole meal.

Verdict? it was an awesome meal, and we actually stayed for almost two hours. Horribly stuffed after that, but definitely no regrets. For a pretty decent price of $29.90 for lunch buffet, this was defnitely a great experience, and great food to boot. I’ll be coming back here.

Us after the meal :

After lunch, we did some shopping at Wheelock followed by a movie at Cathay – Talk to Me. That was a really good movie and we enjoyed it for its black humor and social commentary.

And finally, a light dinner for the both of us, and a bit of practicing for the japanese conversation class for today.

I was really glad for the outing. It was most refreshing and I felt a lot better spending a day out with the girlfriend and just doing stuff. Stuff that does not have anything to do with school. Can’t wait for the exams to be over and for the holidays to be here man. Now it’s just Japanese Oral test tomorrow. I hope I survive 5 minutes of talking tomorrow.

Trying to decave

Had a talk with Stella last night, and I felt a lot better after that. Over the past few months, I’ve been hiding away in my bear cave and as a result I’m starting to find that I’m turning unhealthily antisocial and introverted. This, combined with the recognition that being at home and in my room too much is starting to have a toll on my thinking (and personal growth as a result) has prompted me to want to take some action.  Maybe too much American TV numbs the mind. Okay, not specifically American, but too much TV turns the mind into mush. I’ve got to stop this lethargy if not I’m going to just waste my life away doing nothing. I sneer at the thought of the MMORPG people who sold their souls to the online gaming Lich King, but how am I different from them, sitting on my ass all day and surfing nothing but tech news, fashion news, food blogs from my room? And to think that while people buy clothes so that they may look decent at work, or on the streets, I’ve not bought clothes for the longest time, and have already bought an iPod, with the new Macbook on my wishlist for next year – products that would probably keep me at home more. yeah, great.

So since I need to start somewhere, I need to begin by getting out more and just chilling with the girlfriend and some friends in the near future. Shopping tomorrow with Stella, and an exciting Japanese lunch that we’re looking forward to. Trying to just get out of my mental prison and enjoy life and the world as it is. It’s not supposed to be that difficult, is it?

We are Kuishinbo

Had a post graduation lunch at Kuishinbo. Ever since the last EL outing, we’ve been pretty impressed by both the quality and the quantity of food that the buffet and so this lunch was pretty long awaited.

The glorious food. Lots of Japanese food makes us happy.

Happy Stella. The designs on our tops were similar. Stella bought me my polo as a gift. Thanks dear =)). Just for the record, I’m okay with wearing matching clothes, just not THE SAME clothes. I was pretty impressed with the Korean couples when I noticed that they would dress to subtly match one another, maybe like the top of the female’s and the bottoms of the guy’s. Better than people who wear exactly the same shirt same design and same colour.  :

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Us halfway through the meal.

All in all, we had a wonderful time, with great food and company. We headed to watch Hellboy 2 after a bit of shopping, and I felt that it was a great movie, and it struck a pretty nice chord with me. I’ll be recommending this show to my friends, definitely.

Inspirational

Just read this interview with the lead designer of Visvim on his latest sneaker collection. It’s really nice to see how someone can get so philosophical over design, and then apply this philosophy to his works.