I visited one of my favorite and closest area “Shimo-kitazawa” just recently. In this area, you can see many fashion boutiques, antique goods shops, record shops, used clothes shops and so on.
Shimo-kitazawa was ranked as No.1 Coolest neighborhoods in the world by VOGUE magazine (September 2014 issue) . *Here is the link of the article. http://www.vogue.com/slideshow/1080625/fifteen-coolest-street-style-neighborhoods/
Every time we visit Shimo-kitazawa, we just like to walk around the town and check what is new in this area. (And also, we go to the Starbucks, sit outside of the shop and enjoy watching people.)
Also, we like to go to Daiso, UNIQLO and MUJI shops and do shopping there.The large urban development is now on progress in this area, so my husband and I partly feel sad and also excited to see the new atmosphere!
Gomaae (ごまあえ) is an easy to prepare and tasty side dish. It is especially recommended when you are short of one dish or when you want to eat vegetables to the fullest. Usually, roasted white sesame seeds are used, but of course, black sesame seeds are also delicious. Sugar is used, but please adjust the amount according to your own taste.
Cooking Japanese rice is one of the essential technique in Japanese cooking. Therefore, I will show you how to cook delicious Japanese rice with using a rice cooker. The key points are to sharpen rice without water and not to wash it too much.
This is the Japanese sweets called “Taiyaki”. It’s usually a fish-shaped pancake filled with bean jam.
There is a popular Taiyaki shop near the Kyodo station! They change the fillings everyday like custard cream, banana cream, chocolate milk, soymilk cream, chestnut cream and so on… When I visited the shop, it was a Matcha cheese cake filling♡
This is the Japanese sweets called “Taiyaki”. It’s usually a fish-shaped pancake filled with bean jam.
There is a popular Taiyaki shop near the Kyodo station! The name of the shop is Ogura-an. They change the fillings everyday. For example, custard cream, banana cream, chocolate milk, soymilk cream, chestnut cream and so on… When I visited the shop, it was a Matcha cheese cake filling♡
Since I have a late winter vacation now, I visited one of my favorite area, Roppongi!
To visit this area, I usually take the subway Chiyoda line to Nogizaka station and walk to the Tokyo Midtown. In Tokyo Midtown, there is a lot of cutting-edge stores so I always enjoy the window shopping and got inspired by them.
After that, I visited the Roppongi Hills to see the beautiful illumination near the building. You can still enjoy the Christmas mood there!
In the end of walking, I visited one of my favorite Ramen shop, Gogyo. Almost every time I visit Roppongi area, I go to the restaurant. The soup of this shop is amazing. You will see soon after sipping the soup!
Kayaku means to add various nutritious ingredients. Takikomi Gohan is a genre of cooking rice and it means to steam and mix rice with various ingredients like veggies, seafood and meat. The umami flavor from shiitake mushroom leftover water and other soup make this dish so flavorful and comfort.
Dinner menu : 
