Well, not real giraffes of course. But as part of De Betovering (an art festival for the youth), there were performers walking through the city centre a few weeks ago dressed up like giraffes:
And a close up:
Apparently there was also a hippo, although I didn’t see that one. You can read more about De Betovering on the official website, which translates to “The Enchantment” in English. The event was from 17 October to 25 October, during the autumn school holiday.
If you can, don’t forget to vote tomorrow! The vote is for the Dutch House of Representatives. In theory for the next four years, though the government seems to collapse faster than that lately. Of course, you need to have Dutch citizenship to vote, so I won’t be voting in this one. I do plan on getting it, but at this point it is easier to wait and do the option procedure, which I can do once I have lived here at least 15 consecutive years (and because I am married to a Dutch citizen for at least 3 of those years). So that would be after December 2027. Time flies…
The holiday window decorations are now in place by Bijenkorf, a high-end department store here in The Hague. Here’s a look at one of the windows:
The window reads: “Ook 100 jaar geleden bezorgde de Bijenkorf al aan huis”, or “100 years ago, de Bijenkorf was already making home deliveries”.
I found a news article which mentioned that their Christmas departments opened on 11 September (!). It’s early, of course, but going to Bijenkorf to look at Christmas ornaments and other decorations is a tradition for a lot of families. It sort of reminds me of the mall scene in A Christmas Story, only there is no Santa!
Last month, Marco and I celebrated our anniversary by going out to eat at Mad’Ras, an Indian restaurant. It was our first time. When we first arrived we were one of the first guests, although every table had a ‘reserved’ card on it and it was packed by the time we left. If you go, definitely make a reservation ahead of time. Perhaps it was also because the weather was outstanding that day. One of those ‘last gasp of summer days’ when it is suddenly warmer than it has been in the last few weeks.
This was the first thing we received (on the house). I enjoyed the presentation of the rolled up cracker/wafer. It came with red onions as well as three sauces (sweet, minty and spicy). As usual, Marco and I both gravitated towards the minty and spicy ones.
We then had a set of appetizers. Next to the sauces you have fried onions (I forget the name. I don’t think it was onion bhaji, but if it wasn’t, it was quite similar). Below that you have two samosas. Did I mention I love samosas? Although we mostly paired it with the mint sauce from the initial appetizer. On the right we had the star of the evening – tandoori prawns. Zó lekker! Definitely order those if you go.
For our main, we split a mutton curry with some naan and rice (below).
At that point we were full, in a nice way. It was great food and we will definitely go back again.
Of course, even when you’re full (ish), you can always make room for ice cream. We stopped at Piet for some ice cream. I had a scoop of lime, ginger and mint and Marco had two scoops (tahini and sticky rice). They were all awesome but Marco said the sticky rice was a bit subtle. I liked mine a lot, but it was quite intense so I found myself stealing a bit from Marco’s ice cream to counteract the flavor. I would order it again, though. Just maybe with a second scoop of something else…
All in all, I can definitely recommend Mad’Ras. (Although I will also recommend Himalayan restaurant as well. The owner is great and we definitely don’t visit enough.)
One last blog post to talk about the awesomeness that was Tokyo (until we get back to Japan again next year!)
I ended my last blog with a picture of Yanaka cemetery. We were actually walking through the cemetery to get from the shopping street Yanaka Ginza to Ueno park. Our goal was to visit the Tokyo National Museum. When we got to the park we noticed there was a food festival going on outside, so we stopped there to have a quick bite to eat. It was great food, including a large piece of flattened chicken. If a random travel group on Facebook is to be believed, it is Taiwanese style chicken like this very random link. We also had very long fries, in the style of raspatat (Dutch Wikipedia link).
The museum was quite nice to walk through, and there was plenty of English to read. But one will stick out to me the most is the awesome cloud cover when we left. It was around 17:15 so everything was starting to get dark as well.
Check out another photo of the clouds, overlooking the park fountain:
The next day, we visited Yokohama, the second largest city after Tokyo, and only about 45 minutes away from Tokyo by train. Admittedly, we stayed around the bay and Chinatown, only doing the touristy things.
The boat on the left was some sort of restaurant or similar, as people kept coming and going. On the right you have the Osanbashi Pier Building, which looks absolutely gorgeous at night. You can walk on the roof and everything – check out the photos on Google Maps. Unfortunately we did not go this time.
Here is another boat in the area, the Nippon Maru. It was previously a training vessel that now serves as a museum.
Behind the ship on the right you can also make out the ferris wheel from the theme park Yokohama Cosmo World.
In the last few days some highlights include visiting Shinjuku Gyoen, a park:
It includes a Japanese-style garden, an English-style garden and a French-style garden. It was a gorgeous day, as you can see in the photo above.
We also visited the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (see the link for an image of the building). It has two towers, each with a free observation deck. You just have to wait in line for a few minutes to take the elevator up. And of course, it is free but they have a cafe and a great souvenir shop, so they do make some income that way.
Here is a look at Tokyo from one of the many windows. Every view was the same, in that the city stretched as far as the eye could see.
Here’s a look at some of the souvenirs we purchased (although maybe not everything is there). For instance, I bought my two textbooks for my next Japanese class at the Japanese bookstore Kinokuniya, just to say I could…
From left to right:
the drawing of the guy is from the anime Death Note which Marco and I are currently watching on Netflix
a dog holding a cup of matcha tea – so cute!
ablue penguin, the mascot of Don Quijote, a discount store
in front of the penguin you have a see-through stand from the Pensta store (on that is the Suica card‘s penguin mascot)
in front of that you have a Suica chocolates box. It’s also the perfect size to hold Suica cards when not in use…
To the right of that you have a few items Marc purchased from the Tokyo National Museum
In front of them you have a blue Shinkansen train – my first gashapon purchase
to the right of that you have another see through souvenir (the one on the blue string) from the Pensta store
In the far back you have a black and yellow journal (with the sort of butterfly motif)
In front of that you have a porcelain cat, purchased at the government building
Next to that you have a fox, dog and a purple and blue gummy bear, all gashapons
thanks to Roger for financing my third gashapon attempt for gummy bear, as the first two weren’t a color I liked as much (yellow)
behind the gummy bear is a box, a small do-it-yourself My Neighbor Totoro paper decoration
lying flat in front is a souvenir from the Atago Shrine (with the stairs to success)
And finally, two of the four earring sets I purchased:
The top blue ones are little blue folding fans. I found them at the government building – it was a nice place to get souvenirs and I loved wearing them to work.
Below those were some spectacular earrings from Ayano Fukumura in Yokohama. They create unique jewelry based on art pieces and similar. The earrings I purchased were inspired by Monet’s “Woman with a Parasol”. Unbelievably gorgeous…! The photo above does not do them enough justice.
I also got to practice a bit of basic Japanese, asking if it was okay to take a few pictures. After that, I definitely needed to walk away before I broke the bank!
I have almost forgotten how warm Tokyo was, after a particularly windy day today (17C/60F with wind gusts up to 80kph/43mph). Though there was only one moment walking home where I felt I was walking backwards rather than forwards due to the wind.
Here are some more photos from the recent Tokyo trip. First off, the night we did the Sumida river walk. It was definitely one of the highlights for me. It was pretty, the weather was a bit cooler, etc.
You can watch a six minute time lapse of the area turning from day to night on YouTube. Before we walked along the river (and crossed over it), we went to the Asahi beer hall for dinner. In the photo above, that is the building on the left with the yellow “ball”. If you watch the linked video, it’s the black building with the flame/torch on top. (Yes, I know, it looks like something else.) The taller building to the left in the video is the Asahi headquarters. The beer and food was good there, but it was easily beaten by Yona Yona Beer Works in Shinjuku, which I will probably share photos of in a later post.
After the river walk, we walked to Senso-ji temple. Marco and Roger have of course been there before but never at night. It was gorgeous.
All of the stores that lead up to the temple were closed because we visited at night, but that was fine. It was nice to walk around when it was quieter. Unfortunately that did mean Roger and Marco did not get their melon pan ice cream this trip (Google Maps link to Asakusa Kagetu) because the store is only open during the day.
The next day we visited Atago shrine which is well known for its “stairs to success”.
Respect to the couple who went up the middle of the stairs, not by the railing. However, Marco explained that the edges of the stairs were quite worn down since everyone went there, so the middle was actually the easier. Marco and Roger previously went up these steps in January, but this time we were smart and took the elevator up and down to get to the shrine at the top. (Shoutout to the Japanese couple who saw us when we were at the top, peering over the edge. They warned us in their best English that there was an elevator we could use instead.)
Marco, Roger and I just got back from a vacation in Tokyo. The trip was about 11 days long. It was my first time, while Marco and Roger have visited Japan a few times already.
We had some good fun, we saw som good sights, and we baked in the sun like it was an easy bake oven. It was quite warm – all of the days we were there were 34-36C (94-96F), except for one which was a maximum of 32C (92F). I knew the summer would be warm, but not this warm with the humidity. But we chose the dates because they were the best deal, knowing that summer would be warm.
Anyway, here are some random photos. First off, we have a cleaning robot in Family Mart, one of the convenience store chains in Japan. It was like a roomba at the bottom with a bucket of merchandise placed on top and a tablet to show off its cute “face”. It really was cute and I think all of us said “Awww….” when we saw it.
The store is also well-known for the melody that plays when you step into the store. You can listen to the 7 second melody on YouTube. It reminds me of an old Nintendo game. I didn’t get into purchasing random ice cream as much as Marco and Roger did, but I did really enjoy purchasing some cold tea. My favorite was Oi Ocha’s dark green tea, although I don’t remember the version I had having added vitamin C. But there was definitely something nice about just jumping into any convenience store (of which there is one on every corner in Tokyo) and getting a bottle.
Then we have one of the two large trees by the Meiji shrine (the shrine is to the right of the right, at the top of the small set of steps):
The tree was impressive — especially with how well it was manicured.
As you can see, a lot of people had UV umbrellas for the sun (myself included, although I mostly used it in open spaces and not crowded streets like this). The street itself was small, but Roger was able to score a few gashapon items here.
Before we left Harajuko we also went to Harakado, a new building which opened up in Tokyo last year. Here’s a look at Harakado at Japan-guide.com – it is quite an impressive building. The name is also a bit of a pun since “kado” means corner, and it sits at the corner of the intersection.
Here is a photo taken from Harakado of the building on the other side of the intersection, diagonally:
Also, since I somehow haven’t posted a picture of food yet, here is one of the ramen dishes I had:
It was at a ramen restaurant (Mensouge 6 Gyoenten) in Shinjuku. This was tsukumen ramen, where the noodles are dipped into the broth separately. Interestingly we ended up having ramen three times in two days – I believe it was lunch, dinner and dinner, maybe? Roger was happy with the last one, when we went to Tokyo Station and set our sights on finding the ramen hall in Tokyo Station. We had lunch at one of the restaurants (I believe it was Oreshiki Jun) and Roger ordered teriyaki chashu. He was thrilled with his choice and let Marco and I try a bit of it.
I’ll try to post a few more pictures later in the week.
Last weekend we went to Umami, an Asian fusion restaurant. Check out some of the food:
Admittedly there was definitely a bit too much creme fraiche on the bao bun at the front of the photo, but it was otherwise delicious. My favorite was probably the veggie dumplings in the back, or the bread with anise dip (not pictured).
On a whim I ordered tea, and it came in a quite handy contraption I had never seen before, a Handybrew. I thought it was so cool I went to a local tea shop, Simon Levelt, the next day and bought my own.
You steep the tea leaves in this plastic container. The trick is that when you put it on top of a glass, it magically pours out, and stops as soon as you lift up the container again (so the opening is controlled by pressure). See also this YouTube video:
Another selling point is that the tea stays pretty warm in the Handybrew container, so even the second glass is warm. I appreciate that. Of course, it’s a bit messy to clean out the tea leaves after the fact, but you can’t have everything!
“Itadakimasu” (いただきます) is said before eating, meaning “I humbly receive” or “I gratefully partake”. It’s a way of expressing gratitude for the meal, acknowledging everyone involved in its preparation, from the ingredients to the cooks.
Yesterday, Marco, Roger and I went to see Fantastic Four at Pathé, a large movie chain here in the Netherlands. After that, we went to Five K Comfort Food, a Korean restaurant. I had katsu chicken tenders, Marco had a katsu chicken burger and Roger had garlic chicken wings. It was all very tasty (although we were definitely stuffed after).
After we were done eating and Marco went up to pay, I noticed some Gundam statues throughout the restaurant:
Here’s another one. In the background you can see even more hanging on the wall…
Definitely a colorful and cool end to the evening!
Last week Marco, Roger and I went to Amsterdam to see the play Hadestown at Royal Theatre Carré.
We had front row balcony seats (thanks Roger!).
Here’s a closer look at the stage before the play started:
Here’s the description from Carré’s website:
“Two ancient love stories are woven into one bold and modern retelling: that of the young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone. When Eurydice makes an irreversible choice, Orpheus sets out to save not only her, but the entire world—with a song that brings spring back to life and a stirring dose of hope.”
I thought it was a pretty good musical. It’s not at the top of the list of musicals I’ve seen, but it is always fun to go to the Carré. The musical was also in English. Certain shows had English subtitles for Dutch speakers (if you look at the first photo, you’ll see black boxes to the left and right of the stage where the subtitles show up). And it was definitely a fun night out with the boys!
Life in the Hague 