2nd oct
went to shin-yokohama's ramen museum with setsuko-san (IFS kitchen) after work today. she brought her 2 daughters along as well - who were super duper friendly! they are at-chan and moni-chan (the younger one) are all japanese kids this friendly? i know singapore kids are pretty hard to get close to. even my little cousins keep a distance from me if they haven't seen me in a while.



the basement is a transition to the traditional japanese era.



old tv

okashi-shop. like mama-shop.



moni-chan showing off her hula skills!

a game requiring you to carve out a little picture from some plasticine-clay like material without breaking it. you get a prize for your patience.

at-chan trying hard, but her carved picture broke :(

and out of the many ramen restaurants, i chose this


moni-chan had the same dish as me, but a kid's version

at-chan had a ramen which was full of char siew (mine only had like 2 slices)

after we finished dinner, there was a standing act going on so we joined in the fun. the gren thing around the guy's belly is apparently fashion of that time.

basically he slides pictures off the makeshift screen on his trishaw and spins a tale. first he started off with some riddles though, and gave sweets to people who got the answers (people around the guesser get a share in the rewards as well, which was great, since i got a lot of free sweets from doing nothing)




on the way home, we passed by koei!!! gosh. there's several of their branches in hiyoshi. ain't their buildings cool??

keio university is located here as well

16th sept

daniel's last day of work is on the 19th sept, so we held a farewell party for him on tuesday at shin-yokohama's niko-niko okonomiyaki restaurant/izakaya.


it's located in such an ulu building near this big post office, and on the 2nd or 3rd floor (can't remember) that me and atsuko bypassed it when we tried to look for the place. it looks really ancient and i was told that the ramen museum looks kinda like this as well. it's a pretty neat find :D

so here, you have to order your okonomiyaki or whatever (they have omu-rice, yakisoba, monjayaki, etc as well) and you have to make all of them yourself!
so first we had some caesar salad that is draped with plenty of cheese. yum yum. i've also grown to like edamame and almost finished the whole dish as an appetizer.

then this is how the okonomiyaki comes in (we ordered mochi cheese)

ou just mix everything (sort of giri-giri cos the bowl is so small) and pour it on the hot pan (you put oil first of cos), and make it into a pancake like shape.

it then you just need to look out for the underside and when it starts to harden, flip to the other side. finally, you add the okonomiyaki sauce, fish flakes, mayonnaise and this green powdered vegetable and it's ready to be eaten. pretty simple actually.

we also ordered this omu rice thingy.

mika and rie came over to help us cook it though :D
so basically you stir fry all the vege there with this soy sauce, then mix in the rice.

then you whip the egg, pour it in and try to wrap your fried stuff in the egg. the finishing touch is again the sauce, mayo and bonita fish flakes.

good job mika!

the third dish - takoyaki is prepared by marser! he says it's his first time though.
we were given the ingredients and a takoyaki machine

so you pour the flour mix, spread out the tako and pour in the remaining miscellaneous vege


then you wait for it to harden and you whip it into a ball
marser got bored halfway so daniel came to take over

rie, mika and me tried too. and ta-da!

with the mayo sauce flakes combi again...

it was really fun :D
ooh they have this baked apple thing also where you have to pour in caramel and a huge slab of butter and wait for it to warm.

then top it with ice cream

hmmm heavenly!!!
i had to go around 10+pm since i live so far away so we gave farewell presents to daniel - a puzzle with all our written messages and chocolates. (i didn't get to write my message because the pen wasn't working well at that time... sheesh) and daniel also gave a speech.

then we took some final group photos

the lady wrapped around daniel is daniel's wife. hahah they are so cute!!!


we'll miss you daniel!!!
with this all the foreigners are really gone from IFS commercial. sad.

20th august
i mistook my trip to kanazawa as 21st august so i went ahead to schedule baito on the 20th as well. luckily it was from 10-6pm so i still had time to prepare. i managed to attend atsu's soubetsukai (farewell party) as well until 8pm.
the party is held at some high class looking karaoke room. when we reached shin-yokohama, atsu was still in the midst of moving and was coming here by shinkansen so we went ahead to eat as some of us were already starving.

we really did order lots and lots of food


huge salad



german potato sausage pizza

some potato thingy

salmon sashimi


hotcake desserts! this one had a hole drilled in the middle and filled with fresh cream

this one is just topped with an ice cream

and i ordered some matcha soya kahlua but the person gave me plain soya kahlua. managed to get it for free since it was their mistake. haha.

my ikea coworkers


since there was a karaoke system, it would be a waste to not sing. so manami started off first!

followed by...

yarmo was embarrassed but she had a super loud voice and could sing without the mike

rie felt she could sing better standing up haha


atsu finally arrived around 8+, and he sang greeen's song which was pretty nice!

i wanted to ask the waiter to help us take a group photo but manami got confused and thought i wanted to take with him!!!

oh man, at least i still got my group photo in the end

manami singing greeen's song as well. she was singing so near the tv that we all laughed until we cried

i left about 9pm and finally went to tokyo station to rendezvous with the rest of the japan tent participants.