Mexican food part 1: I love guacamole

Let’s talk about Mexican food!

In general there was some tasty food there, from the hotel and the restaurants that the Mexicans took us to. Some were not to my taste, and I think I made some bad choices as well. :P But some were extremely good!

The first night there, I was tired and decided to order room service.

The arrachera (skirt steak) tacos seemed the most interesting, but when I discovered the trilogy of tacos at the bottom of the list, I decided I would try three kinds. Being the carnivore that I am, I opted for the first three: pastor tacos, arrachera tacos, and suadero tacos. (I found out later from our Mexican colleague that the “pastor” meat is the kind that is cooked on a vertical spit, like those Turkish kebabs. But the marinade is totally different. And “pastor” is the same word as in English…though I don’t know the origin of calling the meat that.)

In the end, the arrachera taco (the one at the bottom) was still the best!

Another day, I ordered guacamole (an appetizer) from room service, because I was quite full after a late lunch. It was supposed to be a small meal...but when the dish came, it was huge... 

...all because of the tortilla chips and pork crackling. (Note that the menu said "or"...but they didn't ask me which one I wanted, and I didn't say.)

guacamole hidden in the middle

pork crackling on a separate plate

As it was, I didn’t finish everything, though I ate up most of the guacamole. However this was definitely a good opportunity to try pork crackling. It was crunchy but not crispy, if you get what I mean. Slightly hard to bite.

By the way, this was after I had tried guacamole in a high-end restaurant (which I will write about in a separate post), treated by the Mexican team leader. I liked it so much, which was why I thought of ordering this when I was feeling not very hungry for dinner. I didn't manage to get a good close-up photo, but the guacamole contains small chunks of avocado that you can bite into...they are not totally mashed up.

The guacamole from the high-end restaurant was better…but guess what? The arrachera tacos from the hotel are my favourite among everything I ate in Mexico…nothing I had from the high-end restaurant can beat it (but maybe because we didn’t order this same dish :P ).

Another day, with arrachera still on my mind, I had arrachera steak in the hotel restaurant. The dine-in menu was slightly different from the room service menu, which was a little weird. I remember knowing what I wanted to order (from the room service menu), but it wasn't exactly the same on the restaurant menu.

Anyway, this steak was slightly disappointing. The taste was okay, but the meat, even though sliced very thinly, was not very tender. It was even rather tough in some places.

Not satisfied, I made it a point to order arrachera tacos on my last night in the hotel. Happily, it was exactly the same as I remembered: Juicy chunks of beef with yummy guacamole. Lime on the side (the Mexicans have lime with everything; it's provided on tables in restaurants).

I didn't care much for the sauce provided, which was just as well, because if you take a look at my previous taco order, the sauce provided was different each time!

(And a little TMI for you: It didn't happen immediately after I ate that huge dish of guacamole, but on my last day in the hotel, my poop was green. I was confused about the tinge and wondered for a while whether it was a trick of the light, but then I realized that it might be due to eating too many avocadoes :P ) 

I had breakfast in the hotel on weekdays (not having time to go outside and look for breakfast every day). In general the buffet was quite normal, but here are a few interesting items:

This is the first interesting fruit I found. Like a papaya, but not really…the skin is rough like a cantaloupe’s.

Research tells me that this is called mamey sapote, or mamey fruit.

They spend quite some effort presenting their fruits at the buffet... 

And guess what's the yellow one below?

I couldn’t figure it out what it was…it had a kinda familiar taste to it, but I couldn’t place it. The skin was slightly harder, like an orange’s? And the interior was very soft. I wasn’t even sure whether the seeds could be eaten or should be spit out.

After puzzling over it for a while, I asked one of the waiters (they usually have one waiter taking care of a table, because of the tipping custom, I guess) what it was. He told me it was a guava (*insert shocked face here*).

Then I realized that the familiar taste was a guava’s taste…but the soft texture did not resemble the guava that I was used to, so I did not make the connection at all. So it turns out that the skin that I had been avoiding was edible. :P

The raspberries were lovely, so I took quite a few (they were sprinkled around the fruit plate, partially as decoration, and I cleaned up most of it :P ).

And here is a photo that has a strawberry in it; the strawberries there were huge! I took a few more after that (like the raspberries, they were scattered around like decorations). 

In a way, I think eating at the hotel buffet breakfast allowed me to discover a few local items that I wouldn't have managed to try otherwise. There were some nice beef dishes as well, but nothing that stood out a lot (either visually or by taste), so I shall skip the photos. Price-wise, it might not be worth it for a personal trip. But since this was a business trip, the company is paying for the convenience of me spending less time looking for food and more time on work!

Pokemon Store at Narita airport

Back at the airport after visiting Narita, it was time to visit the Pokemon Store!

But before that, I spotted Hello Kitty. 

And approaching the Pokemon Store, there was a Pokemon wall!

too many people...I couldn't get a photo of the whole wall

luckily for me, the store was at my departure hall. See how the walls are decorated?

the entrance

a vending machine

I'm not sure whether the items from the vending machine are also found in the store. It seemed like there were similar key-chains on the shelves, but I didn't really check because I wasn't interested in pilot Pikachu.

plenty of pilots (it seems that every airport store has a different pilot uniform)

machines for decorating 100-yen coins, and selling Pokemon cards?

 After that, moving on to the main attraction!

so many Pokemon ♥

The above are the smaller ones...palm-sized. Here are the bigger ones, still not very big but at least not covered with a palm...

this photo is important because beside the Psyduck is my Eevee! Can you spot it?

Anyway, after that I picked up the Eevee and never let it go...because it was sooo fluffy, and I couldn't find another one like it. I didn't even know how much it cost because I couldn't find the price tag.

here I put Eevee down to take a photo with other fluffy friends who seem to be from the same category

Turns out that they are from the Kuta Kuta Tatta! series, which means "I'm exhausted!"

I found this after coming back home

In the photo above, you can actually see Umbreon's ear (and head, partially) behind Eevee. Later on, I found the price tag for Eevee beside Umbreon's (although Google Lens couldn't exactly translate Pokemon names into English, Eevee's name was phonetically decipherable :P ).

the "special" thing about this Eevee is that its limbs are mobile! ♥

Then these are bigger Pokemon...and these two Pikachu and Eevee are actually made of a special material called boa fabric.

There are also nice luggage tags and luggage straps, but I wouldn't buy them because I wouldn't want to get them scraped here and there.

cute mini padlocks!

I wasn't going to buy any of these, but I eventually bought a Pikachu padlock, because adding it would bring my purchase up to 5000 yen (excluding tax), which would qualify me for a tax-free purchase. The listed prices were including tax. At the counter, my two Pokemon (my Eevee and a sleeping Pichu for WW) cost 2640 yen each (2400 yen plus a tax of 240 yen). So the cashier told me that I added another few hundred yen (220 yen including tax), I could get them tax-free.

The cheaper items at around 300 yen were not interesting...there were pens and generally stationery that were not that cute. So I decided to grab a padlock instead! Since I didn't buy a plush Pikachu, I selected the Pikachu padlock. If I hadn't bought a plush Eevee, I would have opted for the Eevee padlock instead!

And here is a translated receipt...I wanted to post this because it is kinda funny. Google Lens sometimes translates things a bit differently depending on the zoom. In this full picture of the receipt, Eevee is a "worn out walnut", and my padlock became "Pikachu the Panda"! Hahaha... 

A closer zoom, and everything looks better...of course Eevee is still an exhausted stuffed toy (which is exactly what it says on its tag), but at least Pikachu is no longer a panda. :P 

And this last pic is just because I appreciate how they tell us to fold the printed side inwards when storing it. I've had receipts go blank because they weren't folded when stored!

 

What I ate in Japan

In my six-hour transit, I had only time for one meal in Japan. I first took the train to Narita City, and then popped into a small noodle place for lunch.

I actually made a mistake…I thought they had ramen, but it turned out that it was a soba place. They had an English menu, and one side had all “cold dishes” (I guess some foreigners had been surprised when they received cold noodles), and the other side had hot dishes. I definitely didn’t want cold noodles, so I focused on this page.

I opted for the sukiyaki udon.

It came with a small bowl on the side, which I guess is for cooling down the noodles, since the noodles are served in a claypot.

I didn't have high expectations, but the noodles looked and tasted better than expected. The soup had a nice soy flavour, and I didn't feel extraordinarily thirsty later, so I guess there was not too much MSG!

decorations opposite my seat, together with the place to get water (they brought me a glass, but I could refill it there)

I may have missed out on "today's special" due to the English menu. :P 

The shop is called Nisshinan. There were quite a lot of eateries on the Omotesando, and not having internet to check which shops were good, I just tried my luck.

That was supposed to be my only meal in Japan...but while going to the boarding gate, I saw this.

I had heard about baumkuchen before, and even tried a small one in KL. Here I discovered the "mount" kind.

there were different kinds of gift boxes

The shop had a cafe selling baumkuchen and other items. Looking at the menu, I decided to get the tasting set for 1300 yen (that is almost RM40!).

the box is too pretty...

I ordered for take-away so that I didn't have to finish the whole thing immediately (I needed to go and board my plane!). But I immediately had some; the tables were just in front of the shop, and right beside my boarding gate (the box came with a disposable wooden fork). I had some left over which I finished up early the next morning before my flight.

I believe the seasonal flavour is pistachio, because I saw it being sold on the shelves.

This shop is called Nenrinya, which when translated from their receipt, means "Nenrin family".

I'm not sure how special this shop is, but the baumkuchen was definitely tasty. :D 

A circuit of Naritasan Shinshoji Temple

In the previous post, we left off on Shakado Hall. Between the Great Main Hall and the Shakado Hall, there are steps going up. (I am guessing that Naritasan Temple has the -san suffix because it is located on Narita hill.)

I took this photo to show the statue and the wall on the right

The wall tiles have writing on them...though I don't know what they say. I didn't have that much time to leisurely walk around, so I skipped trying to translate them.

there is a lift for those who do not want to (or cannot) take the stairs

what we see upon reaching the top of the stairs

Gakudo Hall

this hall is on stilts, which differentiates it from the next one...

Komyodo Hall

When writing this post, I almost skipped the last photo of Gakudo Hall, because I thought it was this hall. But like I said, the stilts make it easier to tell them apart.

a closer look

amulets on the left

a map...and a path leading down, presumably to the Naritasan Park

letting you see how deeply it goes down

I think this statue was on the left of the path when going towards the great pagoda

a glimpse of the Iouden Pagoda (I like how the tree on the right frames the view, and the colours of the flowers and leaves)

in this photo as well, I like how the trees frame the view

although this photo offers a better view of the two pagodas

selfie with the Great Peace Pagoda (and the Iouden Pagoda, though at the time I had no idea that it was also a pagoda :P )

inside the Iouden Pagoda

the exterior

up the steps of the Great Peace Pagoda

a closer view; their incense holders have such unique designs!

inside the pagoda

another photo because the man was blocking one part, and now both of them are blocking another part... so with both photos, you can see it all :P

there are writing on the fences (do we call these fences?) that I find pretty

Upon using Google Lens, I see that these are names of people and companies. Maybe they are donors?

again, stairs going deep down into the park

I didn't visit the park since I didn't have enough time.

Opposite the Iouden Pagoda, there was one of those purifying water places. There was also a photo of this in my previous post. This time I decided to do a little research, and it is called chozuya . This article explains it like this: “Here you purify your hands and mouth before entering the shrine proper. [...] First take the ladle and rinse your left hand, then right hand, then your mouth.” 

I initially did not plan to take a photo of it (was trying to cut down on taking too many photos), but as I was leaving the area, I saw these ladies in kimono and decided to snap a photo. 

On the way back to the main hall, I took a look at the smaller halls opposite the Komyodo and Gakudo Halls.

Seiryu Gongen Hall alias Myoken Shrine

copied off the signboard...this and the next hall are not in the tourist map

(this is still the same hall)

By the way, it seems like "do" means hall...so there's some redundancy in the English names that I typed, but whatever.

Kaizando Hall

front view

a small structure that doesn't seem to have a name (you can read the sign yourself)

the big sign says "prayer for academic success"

behind it is Tenmangu Shrine, where a god of learning is enshrined

Between this shrine and the nameless building, there was a path leading out to a road. Opposite the road were these rocks.

There were a lot of them, so here's a panoramic view.

After I went back down to the main hall, and walked around it (earlier I had immediately walked to its left to the Shakado Hall).

back of the main hall

remember the wall at the beginning of this post? It goes all along the back of the main hall...on the rocks are statues of Buddhist disciples

somewhere at the back of the main hall

more statues (if you can spot them)

Shotoku-taishi-do, also a small hall that was not in one of the brochures (I found that a smaller brochure has the names of more halls)

Here again there are ladies in kimono...and this time they are foreigners. If you look closely, you can see that they are Westerners.

three-storied pagoda again, this time viewed from the main hall

selfie with the three-storied pagoda, with the Shotoku-taishi-do in the background on the left

view of the "courtyard", if I can call it so

the two buildings on the right are the Issaikyo-do and the Shoro bell tower

going back down the Niomon Gate

inside the gate, I saw someone looking up, and discovered this!

turns out there's a dragon underneath!

and then, back out to Somon gate

The lady on the right actually noticed that I was taking a photo and was nice enough to stop there to avoid blocking my view. Unfortunately she didn't stop outside my frame. :P I quickly took my photo as if she wasn't in it, then proceeded down.

That's all for tourism in Japan! There's still the Pokemon store to write about...but frankly, that isn't really tourism. It's a store!