My Egg Noodles

Here are a couple of videos I took of street performers in Kyoto, Japan. I got chatting to the hip-hop dude for a few hours, sharing beers and generally having a great time while I was wondering the streets alone. Good times.

I miss Japan!

I’m now back in North East Thailand after an epic trip to Japan, and thought I’d dedicate this Photo Friday to my favorite ramen noodle dish! A difficult decision as I can honesty say they were all equally delicious! I have eaten noodle dishes in every country I’ve visited in Asia and Japan wins hands down.

This was called Hokkaidō Ramen (¥1,000 / $11), and was eaten in Ramen Alley – a little street filled with ramen noodle shops in Sapporo. The soup was spiced curry based with all sorts of goodies thrown in including egg noodles, potato wedges, boiled egg, roasted pork, sliced veggies and a small slab of butter. This was easily the biggest ramen dish I had, and was absolutely delicious!

What’s the best noodle dish you’ve ever had?

After getting up nice and early we headed to the train station to get a train to Tiene, about an hour away from Sapporo to do some  snowboarding. Luckily the JR ticket office in Sapporo station sold packages which included snowboard or ski hire, lift passes and transport which consisted of a 20 minute train journey and bus transfers to the club house.

Our train

This was my first time snowboarding so I was full of excitement, like a fat kid just about to munch into some chocolate chip cookies. After sorting out my snowboard and boots, it was time to head out onto the slopes. It took me about 2 hours to get the hang of it, but after that I could go down a 1 star run without falling over. Now it’s just a matter of practice to get faster and eventually learn some tricks! I had such a blast, and the workout was welcome due to over-eating while in Japan.

View from the Tiene train station

While waiting for the bus to take us up the mountain, I watched this guy feed the pigeons!

Getting kitted out!

I’ve just got onto the snow and can’t wait to get up the first slope.

After a full day of snowboarding, I opted for chicken with green pepper pasta with a boiled egg to finish of a great day!

I can’t until next January to get back up to Sapporo for the Sapporo Snow festival and to get some more snowboarding action in!

Today I checked out the snow sculptures at the Sapporo Snow Festival, which were amazing! Some of the sculptures must have taken days to carve out and I’m thankful to the peps that put the effort in as I was blown away by how impressive they were.

Got to love the attention to detail.

Time for a snack. This was a warm cream custard pudding with hot caramel sauce on top. There are no words to describe how good this was!

The Sapparro Snow Festival attracts over 2 million visitors each year, most of which are Japanese.

Impressive ice sculpture.

This was huge. It’s hard to believe it’s all made out of snow.

Every year teams from different countries come to the Sapporro Snow festival to contribute. This sculpture was made from the team in China.

It was time for dinner. A warm hearty bowl of noodles did the trick. Here we have egg noodles with roasted pork, chives and half a boiled egg. Yum!

The yolk of the egg was cooked perfectly… and went so well with the pork and noodles. Dam this was good!