The Train Hacker

23/04/2024

Cheers 😃

Happy St George's Day! 🤺🐉🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🍸😃

18/04/2024

Today's lunch, Japanese bread and other stories

Japanese Bakeries - Today's Lunch

Today's lunch from the bakery (front to back):

- Pork fillet katsu with mild sweet mustard sandwich
- White fish (Aji > Horse Mackerel) with Japanese-style tartar sauce (tartar sauce & mayo mix)
- Hot dog sandwich with cheese, tomato ketchup & mild sweet mustard

Japanese bakeries have all sorts of weird, wonderful and delicious products. While cakes are usually based on European-style classics (and bought from dedicated cake shops), bakeries have their own distinct style.

At standard bakeries you won't find sourdough, granary or wholemeal loaves, you'll only get white bread and baguettes. Still the rest of the bread more than makes up for it 😋

17/04/2024

Wagyu Yakiniku Don

I made dinner with Wagyu beef and rice with yakiniku sauce and wasabi on the side 😋

16/04/2024

Okonomiyaki - my wife's homemade 😋😍🙏

Homemade Okonomiyaki 😋

My wife’s delicious homemade okonomiyaki (savoury pancake) 😍🙏. One of Osaka’s three famous soul foods, okonomiyaki, is made from batter and cabbage. Other ingredients are used to make the batter, and you’ll always get pork belly or seafood (shrimp 🦐 and squid 🦑).

I had it with classic toppings of okonomiyaki sauce (a savoury brown sauce), mayonnaise, nori (dried seaweed) and katsuobushi (also called bonito flakes made from skipjack tuna 🐟).

If you’re wondering about the bear-faced shape, that’s one large and two small okonomiyaki pancakes. Well, I wasn’t going to let them go to waste!

I highly recommend you try it if you’re in Osaka 😋

#お好み焼き

14/04/2024

Sakura 🌸🌸🌸

Cherry Blossoms with Mt. Ikoma in the background, shot a few days ago 🌸🌸🌸

The Ikoma Mountain range splits Osaka and Nara Prefectures. It's very popular for hiking and also mountain biking.

There's two famous temples on the mountains called Hozanji and Chogosonshi-ji. They're as atmospheric as any you'll find in Japan. I highly recommend a visit.

08/04/2024

Sakura 🌸

Sakura - Makino Sunny Beach, Lake Biwa, Shiga

Lake Biwa looked magnificent, adorned in a kaleidoscope of colours with pretty white and pink-hued cherry blossoms, a spring blue sky, a patchwork of green and sakura-coloured mountains, and the shimmering light of the lake. Marvellous 🌸

#琵琶湖 #マキノサニービーチ #知内浜 #桜 #櫻 #さくら #高島市 #滋賀県 🌸 🌸

06/04/2024

Sashimi 😋

Sashimi Moriawase - Uotoku, Nagoya

I always start an izakaya meal with sashimi 😋 Most of the time I'll order 'sashimi moriawase', which means mixed, as you'll get an assortment of seasonal seafood.

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of dining (and drinking!) twice at Uotoku izakaya in Nagoya. I was looking for a place to eat and saw them advertised as a 'Kansai-style' (Osaka) izakaya.

Here's the sashimi we ate on the first night 😋

I highly recommend Uotoku if you're in Osaka. They serve tasty excellent-value food with great service. It's an authentic local place and you'll be looked after.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/uaokpK1yjQsaTHa96

02/04/2024

Ninja 🥷 😃

28/03/2024

Join me at https://www.facebook.com/FoodToursJapan for stories about Japanese food and life in Japan 👍

Dotonbori, Osaka 🐙

#道頓堀 #南 #難波 #大阪市

12/03/2024

Shinkansen departing Yokohama 🚅

12/03/2024

Fujisan 🤣

12/03/2024

Shinkansen departing Nagoya Station

12/03/2024

Shinkansen 😍

12/03/2024

Riding the Osaka Metro 👍🚇