In September or October 2010, a co-worker gave me a small passion fruit cutting.

I grew it on in the apartment all winter, and put it out on the veranda come spring. Passion fruit flowers are finicky. Perfect flowers, but the configuration and the heaviness of the pollen make it unlikely for wind to accomplish pollination. So you either need a healthy bee/wasp population interested in the vine, or need to be on top of it with a paintbrush all the time. So, of the 10 or so flowers that bloomed, I only got four fruit set. Then they sat on the vine FOR MONTHS, not doing much. Finally, they turned purple and fell off.

Yummy passion fruit goodness! So good!

7-Up is delicious, but, until recently, hasn’t been available in Japan. As such, it’s been ages since I’ve had it.

We have 7-Up Clear Dry now, which is 0 calorie 7-Up with 85mg/490ml of caffeine (that’s something explicitly stated on the packaging).

My favourite part is just how pretty it looks. I dunno if it’s because of the clear liquid or the straight bottle, but the bubbles are ever so pretty. :}

Raspberry & Passion Fruit Kit Kat

Saw this at the supermarket today, and thought I’d Give It A Go.  Dark chocolate and raspberry would be nice, but the passion fruit hint… I’m not sure if I like it or not. What it needs is marshmallow, but that’s a different type of sweet cookie thing I’m thinking of!

Morinaga Milk Cocoa Bun

Normally, when you’re in a supermarket or a convenience store and you see a chocolate bun of some sort in the bread section, it LOOKS delicious, but when you buy it, it’s dry and bitter and disappointing.  This thing, on the other hand (which I got for 30 yen off!) is moist, soft, and sweet, with some chocolate whipped cream inside. Easily the best chocolate cake-like thing I’ve ever had in Japan.

Grand Canyon French Fries Pringles

As I’m a sucker for limited edition special wacky flavours of, well, pretty much anything, I just had to give these a try.  For some reason I thought they’d be mustardy, which makes 0% in retrospect, because I don’t eat mustard on my fries, and no one else I know does either. Clearly, the old brain wasn’t working too well that day.

Anyway, if you want to try these, and don’t live in Japan, but you do live in, or near, Canada, there’s a very simple thing you can do.  Go to a Canadian supermarket or convenience store. Buy a bag of ketchup chips. Eat those, but imagine that taste in a Pringle, and without the red fingers afterwards. There, I’ve saved you a trip to Japan.

Salmon Cream Pasta Babystar Ramen

Saw this at the supermarket, and thought I’d give it a go. I’m not entirely clear on the Canada connection, beyond there is salmon in Canada, but whatever, I won’t ask questions.

I don’t… I don’ t know what they taste of.  Certainly not salmon, really. Delicious enough, though, so it’s okay.

So, a friend who I’ve known for ages on the interbutts was in Tokyo on Thursday (though he’s Australian) and had some time to kill, so he popped up here to Tochigi for dinner, which was nice. No one ever comes to visit me.

I asked around, and my colleagues decided that it would be a shame if he came to Tochigi and didn’t have gyoza, so they suggested I take him to MinMin, here in Takanezawa, for gyoza.  And you know what? That’s just what I did.

Garbo at MinMin

There’s a reason I don’t often eat out, though: I never know how to order.  Take me to a bar, I know how to order; take me to an izakaya, I know how to order; take me to a family restaurant, or a fast food place, I know how to order. Take me to a specialty shop, like MinMin, which only does gyoza? I don’t know how to order, because there’s always some sort of secret system that everyone just sort of knows.  I rely on the staff to set me right when I order incorrectly at these places.

But when the staff doesn’t set me right, it sets the stage for possible disaster.

My friend and I sat down, and decided we wanted to try all three types of gyoza available.  We thought, hmm, we can eat about 15 gyoza each, and there’s three types of gyoza, so let’s order ten of each gyoza.  I told the guy, very specifically, “We want ten individual gyoza.”  Now, I’ve been to gyoza restaurants that let you order individual gyoza, with a minimum order, and I’ve been to gyoza restaurants where you have to get “orders” of x gyoza each.  I wasn’t sure what type this place was, so I figured I’d start that way, and the man would correct me.  “Ah,” I thought he might say, “you must order in lots of six. So, how does two orders of six sound? Okay?”

He didn’t, though.  I said we wanted 10 (individual) pan fried gyoza, 10 (individual) deep fried gyoza and 10 (individual) boiled gyoza.  “Is that all?” “Yes,” I said, and he toddled off.  I spoke with my friend for a few minutes, and then got a terrible knot in my gut.  There was something not right.

I called the waiter over. “Now, you realize we wanted 10 INDIVIDUAL gyoza, yes?” and specially emphasized it. “What? No, here, gyoza come in orders of six, so you’ve ordered 60 individual gyoza of each type.”

Now, my friend and are, probably, GIANTS, LANDWHALES, etc., to this waiter, but still, you expect us each to down 90 gyoza? Fuck off! “No nono, you’ve made a horrible mistake, you daft twit! Run! Correct it! We only want one order of each, each.”

“Oh… OH! OH!” and the waiter ran off.  We didn’t end up paying for 180 gyoza, and so I assume that he’d caught it in enough time. Still, I imagine that some people who came in after us got gyoza that had been prepared for us and kept warm, instead of their own super-fresh gyoza. Ah well.

I think, had I gone in alone, and made this ordering mistake, the waiter would have corrected me. However, I had arrived with an Asian-looking fellow.  I did the ordering, and the waiter may have assumed that, had I misspoken, the Asian-looking fellow (who the waiter would have assumed to be Japanese) would have jumped in to correct me; when he didn’t, he must have thought, “… well, they are portly fellows. I guess 180 gyoza isn’t that strange!”

So yeah, it was partly my fault for not knowing my way around this particular gyoza shop, and partly the waiter’s fault for making silly assumptions. In the end, probably no harm was done, but I’ll probably get the stinkeye if I go back.

Pan-fried Gyoza

Anyway, our food finally came.  First, there was the ‘normal’ panfried gyoza.  They were well cooked, well crispy on the pan side, steamed to perfection on the other side. The filling wasn’t anything special or amazing — it was just good gyoza filling, exactly what you’d expect.  They were juicy, but not juicy to the point of needing to wear a bib.

deep fried gyoza

Next came the deep-fried gyoza.  I had expected them to be super crispy and greasy, but they used some sort of different dough for the deep fried gyoza, and they were crunchy but not crispy, and completely ungreasy.  The dough actually reminded me of something else I’ve have, but I couldn’t think of what for the life of me. They were great, though.

Boiled Gyoza

Finally were the boiled gyoza.  I’m sure that some people like boiled gyoza, and I do, you know, in nabe, or soup or whatever. But on their own? Nah, they’re not my thing, and so no matter how good MinMin’s may have been, I wouldn’t have much good to say about them, and so I shall refrain from comment.

All in all, our 6 orders of gyoza worked out to under 1500yen, which surprised my friend, who had been prepared to pony up as much as 5000yen for dinner.  Good value for what we got, I reckon.

View Larger Map

Utsunomiya MinMin has eleven shops scattered through out Utsunomiya with a few shops in outlying areas.  The Takanezawa restaurant is located at 高根沢宝石台1-8-18, and is open Wednesday-Monday, 11:30-20:00. Inquiries can be made to 028-675-0609.  There is parking, but only for eight cars.  They also do home delivery anywhere in the country of gyoza for omiyage purposes, at reasonable prices, I think.  If you’re ever in Tochigi, do give Utsunomiya MinMin a try, yes?

Baked Sweet Potato Kit Kat

Saw this at the supermarket the other day and decided to give it a go.  It’s not a full bag of sweet potato ones, but rather half-and-half split with normal kit kat.  (shrug)

There’s not a very strong sweet potato flavour from these, actually.  They taste like a generic white chocolate type.  They’re kind of like the kinako flavoured kit kat in that way.  Though the taste isn’t strong, if you take a big whiff of it before chowing down, there is a definite baked sweet potato fragrance.

All in all, nice to try just so you can say HAW! I ATE SWEET POTATO KIT KAT, but don’t expect a whole lot.

Salt Ramen Caramel

I was given this a few weeks ago but didn’t get around until trying it now.  Salt ramen caramel? Bizarre! How on earth does that even work? It wasn’t really salty at all. It wasn’t really caramel-y either.  It wasn’t ramen-y either.  It was just… nothing, really.  Oh well.