The spicy dish Mabo Tofu (or Ma Po Dou Fu) is an all-time favorite you can enjoy in many restaurants across Asia, including Japan where I'm based. But did you know that if you find yourself in the Chinese city of Chengdu (成都) in the province Sichuan (四川) you can visit the restaurant where this dish originally originated from?

With the literary meaning "pockmarked granny's tofu" this dish emerged some time in the latter part of the Qing Dynasty (around 1874) when the wife of the owner of this restaurant (then known as Chen Xingsheng Eating House - 陳興盛飯舖) used whatever she had on hand to serve cheap meals to local workers. Her distinguished appearance with pockmarks on her face such led to the name of this dish, and later on the name of the restaurant also was changed to include the name of her now famous dish (now 陈麻婆豆腐老店).

Although the number of Chen Ma Po Dou Fu restaurants have increased (you can even find one of a chain restaurant in Tokyo), the original pockmarked granny's restaurant is still up and running in Chengdu .

Isomaru Suisan (磯丸水産), or Isomaru Fisheries, is one of my favorite Japanese style restaurants in Tokyo. The izakaya chain's interior design resembles that of a charming Japanese beach-hut, and the walls will immediately catch your eyes with their vivid colors. This is a place where you can find fresh and cheap seafood served 24/7, so you can never be too late for a little visit.

Entrance to the Kokubuncho area

Entrance to Ruriza

Details from the interior

Details from the interior

If you sit by the counter you can watch as the food is being prepared

Sushi ready to be served

Otoshi (お通し)

At a lot of Japanese izakaya-style restaurants it is common to get served an otoushi (お通し), which is a small appetizer that you pay for in lieu of a cover charge. This restaurant served us a couple of pieces of sushi with our drinks (picture above), and the cover charge was 432 yen incl. tax.

Sashimi (raw fish)

All in all it was a nice place. We payed around 2500 yen each in total for our food and drinks there, but the food came in relatively small portions so if you don't mind spending more on a dinner you might want to order more than we did. For those interested in trying the Sendai speciality Beef tongue gyuutan (牛タン) you can also get it here.
Either way the atmosphere was good, and an evening here will definitely be a nice dining experience in Sendai.

Sendai Washington Hotel

The Westin Sendai Hotel

Mitsui Garden Hotel Sendai

Sendai Royal Park Hotel

• All blogposts from Sendai
• The City of Trees: A visit to Sendai and the Aoba Castle
• Sightseeing in Sendai: The house of Bansui Doi (晩翠草堂)
• Dining out in Sendai: Ruriza (瑠璃座) in Kokubuncho (国分町)

• All blogposts from Miyagi Prefecture
• 8 Months After the Tohoku Earthquake: Trip to Ishinomaki
• Japan: Foxes, Foxes and more Foxes!! A visit to the Zao Fox Village

• All blogposts from Japan 

In the center of Old Riga you can find a medieval restaurant called Rozengrāls that offers authentic cusine from the Middle Ages in an ancient wine-vault first mentioned in scripts dating back to 1293. In addition to giving you the chance to experience dishes from a distant past a visit to this restaurant also gives you the chance to enjoy the charming medieval atmosphere of the vine cellar.

The Baltic countries has long been a place I've wanted to visit, and when I found out that an new airline offered really cheap tickets available from Bergen to Lativa I decided to go for it and spend some days there with friends and family. I teamed up with my old travel buddy Adaora, my cousin and my grandmother, and left a rainy Bergen hoping for some sun in the Latvian capital Riga.

After having spent three weeks in Seoul following Yonsei University's intensive course in Korean I headed to Tokyo again for an interview that had been scheduled to take place during the last week of February.
I spent almost a week in Tokyo this time, and this time I had the chance to meet up with my German friend Silke who lived in the same dorm as me during my first semester in Kyoto. I guess it has been two years since last time I saw her.. Time sure flies!!

The entrance to うまい鮨勘

On Saturday Yuma and I had been planning to visit the Sky Tree, something we have been talking about doing ever since the building opened. This time it was the wind that stopped us: apparently one can't go ll the way to the top on days when it blows a lot, so we decided to save the trip for another occasion. Instead we took the trip down to Tsukiji, where Tokyo's well known fish market lies.

Cute glasses with sushi illustrations

Arriving there at noon we walked around for a while looking at the different fish-serving restaurants that was in the area. But although there were quite a large number of them they all seemed to have pretty long queues of potential guests too, despite the rather high prices for most of them. After having walked around the area for a little while we decided upon a restaurant called Umai Sushikan (うまい鮨勘) that seemed to have a pretty good menu, and not too many people lined up in front of it.

It was a nice and spacious restaurant in comparison to the other ones we had walked by (which might explain while the queue was relatively short), and we both got very delicious looking food. Along with the food we ordered they also included free miso-soup, which one could get free refills with as well! I was quite impressed by that, as free refills aren't too common in Japan.
The atmosphere of the restaurant was also quite nice; you could watch the sushi-chefs at work or just admire the fancy sushi-clocks hanging on the wall. For those out there who are really adventurous (or...?) they were also having whale meat on the menu..!
*Address:
うまい鮨勘 築地市場店

東京都中央区築地５丁目２−１

うまい鮨勘!

People had to wait in line in front of the restaurant

A sushi-clock!

Sushi chefs in action

Next was time for a little trip to Odaiba, which is known as a kind of hot-spots for couples (especially the ones who likes shopping). We checked out the Japanese version of the Statue of Liberty there, and came to the conclusion that it definitively would be better to see the real one in New York, and that we also both would prefer to live close to the harbor in Yokohama. Anyway, we wandered around in the big shopping centers there for a couple of hours without actually buying anything. Yuma insisted that he had just had his payday and that he would buy me something if I wanted to, but I'm really not that interested in buying things just for the sake of buying things so in the end I didn't buy anything and neither did he. For me spending the day in good company was the best about our shopping trip, as the centers usually is the same old rush of people running around harvesting objects they don't really need. As always. I'll rather save up the money and use it to buy my next plane ticket to some exotic destination (spoiler: I'll visit Norway in August!!)
But now I'm on my way back to my school in Korea, ready for my second semester to start. So for now, the most exotic thing I'll see in the near future will be the forest surrounding Kyunghee University's GIP campus and the inside of the meditation room every morning at 7 am..

The Japanese version of the Statue of Liberty

Inside the shopping mall at Odaiba