Swiss Bistro

When I want something to drink, not tea or coffee, I will have this: a cup of " tom yum" soup from the shelves at the  supermarket. When I am a little bit hungry and I want  something quick, it is good. In Japan, green tea is a little bit different from the green tea we buy here.  I can taste the sweetness in the bitter.... This one is specially made with new tea leaves. It keeps me calm. There are some nice flavored tea in New Zealand, but I brought a nice apple tea from Japan. It is a normal black tea with apple taste. Those Japanese tea are from my friend. To get nice Japanese tea in New Zealand is not easy, so it is precious for me. I will save it as much as I can !!! This is also from my other friend. Actually I got it  last year. It is a Japanese fish stock. Again it is a precious thing for me. I will use it on days when I cook special Japanese food.

Last week started with quite warm weather but this week it is a bit colder......that is real New Zealand.  The weather forecast said snow might come again.............. what !!!???  It is almost spring isn't it? and the cold weather might last until the first week of October. Oh no............. I picked this prediction on a website,   The end of September is the next date for the largest earthquake event in Christchurch .  I hope it won't be true, but it is better to keep it in mind.

On Sunday, we went for brunch with our best best best friends who were still on holiday in Europe when we left for Japan, so we had a lot to talk.....spent about 3 hours, yeah !!  We really miss doing that since we had the earthquake. They used to come to our cafe every Sunday for brunch before.  We always talked about anything and everything, laughed a lot..... there are very few things we don't talk about between us .....hahaha.  To meet and talk to them is really nice, Thanks my friends xxx

Has the situation changed in Christchurch? .........  unfortunately,  not much...... Our cafe is still in the cordon. This big building is the hotel by the entrance of our cafe. The hotel is all right, standing straight but from here to the hotel, most of the buildings have  disappeared  except one...... unbelievable sight........all gone...    The leaning Hotel Grand Chancellor is being  demolished now. It will take up to 48 weeks. The CTV building was in this corner.....it is all gone. We know the demolition is ongoing but it is not fast enough.Sadly we still can not get into our cafe and we still do not know what to do. We wish we could go back to the days before the earthquake........

One of my favorite Japanese food is Soba-noodles which are made with buckwheat. I am really fussy about soba-noodles. You can have hot or cold ones. The hot noodles come in the hot soup, and the cold ones come with cold soup separately then you dip the noodles in it. I prefer cold ones because when you eat them, the flavor of soba spread in your mouth and you can enjoy the texture of the noodles (al dente) much better. My father brought us to one of his favorite noodle shop. There was a nice little Japanese garden next to our seats. The taste of the soba-noodles was perfect  !!!!  We really enjoyed it. http://www.honmura-an.co.jp/ http://blog.goo.ne.jp/honmura_upd_garden/ 　(English) real wasabi For the last supper we had Sushi once more. This is a real Japanese style sushi, sitting at the counter, we order one by one.  Tuna, white fish, prawn, crab, scallop ...... everything was ...

Tokyo part 4. Once again we went to Omote-sando, but this time we visited with a friend, a building called Omote-sando Hills. This plain building from the outside is in fact full of fashionable little shops( expensive or affordable) and restaurants. It has been opened since 2006. We found a German restaurant. http://www.zato.co.jp/english/main_e.html Giorgio was missing his Bratwurst so we decided to go in to find if they had a similar one. We found German Bratwuerste almost the same but not quite ( Giorgio said) and German beer. The staff was Japanese but one of them in the kitchen was a Kondiitorin who spoke German and came to us to talk. She told us that she stayed 3years in Germany. She was so happy to be able to speak German with Giorgio. It was nice of her.

We found some Swiss and New Zealand food in the supermarket!!!! Swiss sweets which we always buy......Ricola, Kein's Raspberry Candy, Swiss wafers and chocolate....this time we found Moevenpick chocolate. And this !!!! Giorgio found dried Porcini (mushroom) 25g 1090yen= $17(NZ) Giorgio's favorite.....black cherry jam New Zealand kiwi fruits in Japan are BIG, well shaped and juicy !!!! New Zealand honey was quite expensive in Japan. This honey from Giorgio's friend's farm !!!

It is a beautiful Monday and we are back in New Zealand !!! From the airplane the view was lovely. We could see the beautiful green land and the white snow covered mountains. Sorry I forgot to take a picture.......  so you better come to New Zealand and see it by yourself.......hahaha !!! On the airplane before landing the announcer said the temperature was 4℃, so we were ready to put a jacket on, but when we were on the ground it was not that cold. The warm and nice weather  was welcoming us back. A real Spring weather. I, not Giorgio, wish I had  a little bit of this weather when I was in Japan with 38℃ and 90% humidity. We still have a few stories from Japan which we will write about later.

Since last night there has been a few earthquakes in Japan. This afternoon as I was watching TV suddenly an alarm appeared on the screen, warning me of a big earthquake coming. A few seconds later the house started to shake. It lasted for about 15 to 20 seconds. Then a Tsunami warning also appeared on the  screen. It was the first time I saw an alarm like this . It is a new earthquake warning system in Japan. That is so great. It did not give me much time to prepare myrself  but my mind was ready. This earthquake was of a M 6.8 but there was no damages anywhere.......  my family did not panicked, they stayed calm......... well trained !!!

Tokyo part 3. When we come to Japan we always go to Asakusa which is one of the old part of Tokyo. This time we visited it at night.                                           The Senso-ji temple was beautifully lit and looked quite different than in the day time. It is time to eat Asakusa style, yeah!!!! Both side of the street are full of little Japanese traditional style pub. We did not know what we wanted to eat.......... We ended up with this .............!!!  Ramen-noodle. We just found this little shop as we were wandering. It made TV and magazine review. The shop counts a few famous  Japanese people as their customers.　 The pork roast was nice and tender. The ramen-noodle with soy base bouillon were also very nice. The gyoza (dumpling) were big and typically Japanese. http://www.yoroiya.jp/ http://www.toky...

Tokyo part 2. One of Giorgio's favorite place with its fashionable, international and a lot of people......... is Omote-sando liking itself to the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich or the Champs-Elysees in Paris. We usually take the train to Tokyo.(about 45 minutes) Giorgio got a Tokyo train map in English with him, so he doesn't get lost. We got off the train at Omote-sando station, walk to Harajuku station and through the famous Takeshita street, which is always full of people. Back to Omote-sando, we found a big queue on the corner of a street. We asked a lady who was in the queue what she was waiting for??? She said she was waiting to go into a cafe which was famous for Hawaiian pancakes and recently open in Japan. She was going to wait for at least 1hour !!!! http://www.eggsnthingsjapan.com/ hmmm........  waiting for over 1hour for pancakes ........ that's crazy.................. well... not for us today. Now, we are hungry...... on our way to A...