One of the Most Splendid Japanese Gardens I have ever seen in my life

Well, like I noted in my yesterday's entry, my family had an opportunity to visit this restaurant called "Ukai Tori-yama" at the summit of Mt. Takao in Hachio-ji, Tokyo today for lunch, since this was what my grandma for so long wanted to do for us.

Apparently, my aunt who lives in Tokyo took her there not so long ago, and my grandma just fell in love with the beauty of the Japanese garden at the restaurant. Since we have our family restaurant business that has been running for over 80 years (3 generation business) with the same concept of providing peaceful restaurant experience enjoying the garden that the customers can see through this open-windows from the guest room, my grandma wanted to take my parents there to show what other people are doing in their business. It's always good to get inspiration and different ideas to improve what we do afterall, you know? So we always appreciate our opportunity to visit any eatery that can give us much inspiration and great influence/stimulation for our own creation.

So we left our house at 8am to go and see my cousin's family first, and then went to the restaurant. We got there just before 1pm. Here is the photo of the restaurant entrance. We were asked to wait inside until their staff came to lead us to our reserved guest-room.

Please prepare to see these breath-taking beauty of the Japanese garden reflecting seasonal plants and flowers beautifully.

On our way to our guest room, we saw many other guest rooms build separately to others like this. I guess this provides us a total privacy for our restaurant experience. Sweet, right?

This is where one of our dishes were prepared by a chef specialized preparing sweetfish dishes. You will see a photo of the dish later...

I liked how a bunch of trees were grown on one spot like this.

Below view sort of reminds me of the most famous temple in Japan, Kin-kaku-ji (Golden Pavilion) in Kyoto.

I filmed a video-tape of this garden, so if you were interested, please click on the photo.


And here is the guest room we stayed for our lunch.

Here is my grandma. As you can see, you can see the garden from the guest room, thanks to the clear wide windows used as wall. I also filmed what I viewed thru this smaller window from the room. Please click on the below photo to view the file.

So we were already stunned by the beauty of the Japanese garden and the guest room before we were to actually experience the meal. My parents ordered 8000 yen/person (about 70-75 US dollars) course meal and my grandma and myself ordered 5000 yen/person (about 40-45 US dollars) course meal. This is what we got first. A very silky and creamy tasting fresh tofu. Actually this was my favorite dish of all I had there. LOL

Below, here is a dish with sweet miso paste placed on a grilled eggplant. Was tasty, but not so impressive. Well, next.


I do not think I have ever made a comment on what kind of food my parent's restaurant is specialized in. Well, it is specialized in carp fish, and we have a course-menu starting from 2000 yen/person for lunch and 3000/yen for dinner. All course meals start with a little appetizer, and the first main meal is a koi-no-arai (carp fish sashimi). So my parents who noticed this entry (carp fish sashimi) in the receipt menu, we wanted to try how they serve the carp fish at this restaurant. Here is what we got, and we were SHOCKED.
Well, because there were only 6 slices of sashimi, and they were charging us 800 yen for this.
I tasted a slice of sashimi, and was certainly sure how my dad could cook much better than this.

Although this is a small image, you see the square dish on left hand side bottom?
That is how we serve our sashimi at our restaurant. Much volume, don't you think? LOL Well, my dad did a little calculation and said that he would only charge 150 yen (almost less than 1/6 of their price) for the amount of carp fish that the restaurant gave us. LOL

I guess my dad is a business-man afterall. Always quick on calculating things like this. LOL Anyway, this certainly made me realized how much of great deal that my parents offer to our customers at the restaurant. Tasty fresh food at such affordable price! Anyway, I sound like a silly daughter trying to promote her parent's business, but really, I started to realize how much energy, thoughts, creativity, great customer service spirit, and this immense desire to fulfill the customers are put by my great grand-father, my grand parents and my parents in our 3 generation-family business we have here. Well, for those who are curious, please visit my folk's restaurant website. I am very proud of where I came from. So here it is: http://www.Kougaike.com (Kougaike-it is the name of pond in our property (garden) where we keep our carp fish in spring water. Because of this gift from the nature, we were able to start this business, so this is how the restaurant was named after).

Anyway, back to what we had in our course meals at THIS restaurant. We got a bowl of soup with a few fish balls and slices of leak in it. Tasted all right.
My parents got this salmon called: "Sakura Sake" meaning cherry bloosom -salmon?! Sounds interesting right? Well, I tried a little of my mom and thought that it was my kind of salmon sashimi. Not so fattening and just right sweetness and texture to it..
My parents got this grilled steak. The sauce they gave us was not so impressive. Just soy-sauce and wasabi. I was like, comon, I can even do that for my parents! LOL But this was when I started to get a little disappointed by their lack of creativity in their meals.
However, I was impressed by this photo that I snapped! LOL you see, there is a lantern(light) reflecting on the table. Kinda cool eh? LOL

Below huge chunk of chicken and shiitake mushroom were to be grilled at front of us. We had a cheesy entertainment chambara- master (as seen at Beni-hana) coming to our guest room telling us how to grill the meat. My dad kept imitating his service smiles while this gentle-man was doing his business, and sorry, I had a trouble trying to hide my urge to giggle. LOL
Then we got the grilled sweet fish brought to us.
Typical Japanese soup-miso soup with nameko mushroom and some pickles. We also got a bowl of brown rice.

My grandma and I got no desert in our course meals, but my parents did. So kind parents gave us the sweet. :) Sticky rice desert with green-tea filling inside. I wished we got fresh green-tea to go with this though..

My mom decided to take a photo of my grandma and myself while enjoying the desert.


So we enjoyed our lunch experience until 2:30pm and then returned to the lobby to pay the bill. Here is a photo of the lobby, btw.

I like this photo personally a lot:

My dad posing for me. LOL


This is probably one of my favorite photos here:

So yes, it was absolutely wonderful having had this great opportunity to see this most splendid Japanese garden at this restaurant. I realized how much I LOVE the Japanese garden. I feel sooooo lucky that I was able to come here during my stay in Japan this time. Although the meals lacked creativity and its quality for the price we paid, we definitely enjoyed our quiet, peaceful and spiritually-healing environment at this restaurant. I want to thank my parents and my grandma who took me there today. Thank you very much!!! :)　Now, do you guys feel like coming here? hehehe I am sooo LUCKY!

Getting ready for my return to Canada

The past few days, I have spent some of my time running back and forth between the living room, laundry room and my room to pack my stuff for the move.

And my thought right now: not sure if I can fit in everything that I want to bring with me.

Well, one thing I know is that I must leave my winter clothings here and have them sent to me in fall. I cannot even bring this pig skin jacket that I got on yahoo auction the other day. :( So that's too bad, but oh well. I can live without it, but the joy that I get from color-coordinating my outfit is something that I can not get rid of right now. I realized how much positive energy i get from colors these days.... anyhow,

so i have bought most of stuff that I need to bring with me.
i still need to get a cool yukata (japanese summer kimono) for my friend though.
it's been a great challenge to get a decent yukata online. I have been trying to get it on the auction (of course, new kimono), but most of them are quite expensive (over 100 dollars), so I am hoping to get a good deal for you, ange! (if you were reading this)...
i also need to find a couple umbrellas for her mom.

other than that, I got a yakisoba sauce for you, John (please let me know your address, so that I can send it to you).
I also got a little something to give you, Dawn (please wait for a mail from me until I settle down in Toronto).
and one gift has been reserved for your coming b-day, Scott.
I also got a bit of little something for my buddies in Toronto. :)

So I am feeling better--taking care of things now.

Today, I got my International Driver's LICENSE!
All I needed to do was drive for 30 minutes away from home to this driving center, show my driver's license, a photo, and inkan (family stamp) and pay the fee. It was very simple for me to get it. So this means that I will be able to drive a car in Canada if necessary. :)
Although I sure need to remind myself that it will be *keep on right* this time. LOL

Other than that, I was working on this translation trial that I was asked to do from a translation company a couple days ago. It turned out to be a quite challenging assignment to complete. For a person who has not majored in finance nor read the finance section of the japanese newspaper, it took hrs to complete it. I had my parents check my translation (it was from English to Japanese), and sent my work right away a few hrs ago, and I already got a respond saying that they could not get me the position and encouraged me to try again sometime later. :(

So I feel a bit disappointed about this.
I mean who enjoys getting rejections afterall? :(
But I need to get used to rejections now before arriving in Toronto, as I expect myself to be experience a lot of that during my full time job search....Well, gotta keep taking actions though. :)

Tomorrow, my grandma wants to take us to a really fancy Japanese restaurant for a nice meal. This was something that she kept telling us about, something that she really wanted to do while my stay. So the day has come, and I feel a little sentimental and emotional about the fact that I am really leaving here in less than a week now. To be exact, 5 days!

So we will leave the house tomorrow early so that my parents can meet with my cousin's family in the morning before heading to the restaurant. In the evening, we will return here for the restaurant business.

On Friday, I plan on trimming my hair. Do more packing and the last minute shopping.

Saturday, I hope to meet up with a friend in Tokyo. If she is not busy, that is.

Sunday is the father's day where I want to do some cooking to cerebrate my dad's fatherhood.

Monday is the day I depart for my journey.

So really, I do not have much time left with me. But I really hope to take care of everything before I leave..

Okay, someone please use a magic so that I can fall into sleep earier tonite. LOL
Good nite, and for you people, please have a wonderful day!

peace and hugs,

Kumi

My Life Update

So my parents finally came back from their trip from Canada.
They first arrived in Vancouver to unite with my older and youngest sisters, then flew to Toronto to meet up with my another younger sister (that's right. I have three sisters!), who got a job as an assistant to the producer of the Red Hot Chilli Pepper. This sister, who got this cool employment opportunity was moving to Vancouver, BC for the job, so my dad took this opportunity to help her move from London, ON to Vancouver, BC by acrossing Canada in god knows how long, hmmm like a week?

But it turned out that my dad used my sister's move as an excuse, and the main purpose of the trip was to go and see the mystical lake in Alberta, Lake Louise, and the huge falls as you may have heard in Bjork's song: "You've never been to Niagara Falls? I have seen water, its water, that's all", the Niagara falls in Ontario and basically just to see absolutely nothing for hours in central Canada (oh they said, they saw a moose though), but beatiful mountains in BC.

No, the main purpose of this trip was to cerebrate my parent's 30th marriage anniversary. This is what I was told when my mom returned from the trip showing off this pair of gorgeous ammonite earrings to me. I was like: "woah, good god, dad. it's great to be an action-taker to express his feelings like this, once in a while". LOL Well, although my dad is a very unique Japanese father, who would send off all his daughters over-sea for educational and personal development purpose at such young age (we all left home when we were 15/16), he still is a shy guy who would not express his feelings verbablly. So surely, my mom was in such a great mood, when she returned.

To think of it, I do not know if I have ever seen such peaceful and happy state of my mother like this in my past. A few days ago, I spotted my parents laughing together while looking into each other's eyes. I was like: "were they like this before all of us were born??" LOL

Also, I spotted them facing the computer going through all the photos and movies from the trip, deciding which one to print out. It is usually my dad who just asks my mom to take care of everything like this, so it was very refreshing to see both of them doing something together.

So over all, things are super good here, thanks to my parents frequently communicating with each other and both of them feeling happy and at peace.

:)

I want to thank my sisters who must have made this trip successful also. So if you were reading this, THANK YOU, sister~s!

Night Views on my parent's garden here in Japan