Saying Goodbye to Japan.

As you may have gathered from my previous posts Nick and I had an amazing time traveling around Japan. Nikko, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Osaka and Ōkunoshima (bunny island!) were all different and wonderful in their own ways. We were really glad we decided to get a rail pass so that we could see more of the country than just Tokyo but there are so many amazing things to do (and eat!) in Tokyo that we ended up cramming a lot into our final three days! 

We arrived back in the city after a five hour train journey from Hiroshima at around two or three in the afternoon and decided to head straight to Hanada Rosso for one final burger. I was still dreaming of the burger I ordered on our first visit so I ordered that again, it comes topped with homemade soy mayo and ketchup and it's super tasty.

I also chose the side of homemade potato wedges again rather than rice because that seems to mesh better with a burger in a bun in my mind. Of course I followed it with the cheesecake which was obviously delicious.

I'm still searching for a recipe for a perfect Japanese style cheesecake so shoot one my way if you have one! 

We went out late that night to the super swanky New York Bar atop the Park Hyatt because that's the bar from Lost in Translation! Drinks were expensive but the atmosphere was great and the view was incredible. After a nice lie in the next morning we headed to another of our favourite spots Pure Cafe for something resembling brunch. I ordered my favourite Mr Mustard Sandwich which comes stuffed full of roasted veggies, grilled potatoes, and a tofu cheese spread. I also ordered yet another slice of cheesecake. 

Nick got another PB & Banana sandwich and a jam filled oat bar that looked good but it certainly wasn't something I'd have picked over cheesecake, Nick's commitment to jam is strong!

We spent most of the rest of the afternoon walking around the city and taking pictures of everything! Even the drain covers are beautiful in Japan.

Whilst we were drinking matcha lattes, yes, again, we really did spend our final days eating and drinking all of our favourite things, we kept seeing young women coming in with adorable Care Bears / Little Twin Stars bags. A little googling told us that there was a Little Twin Stars X Care Bears exhibit right around the corner! How serendipitous! Of course we headed straight there as soon as we finished our lattes. It was unbelievably adorable, look, puffy cloud bears! 

I wanted to pick this up and take it home!

After Nick was all outa patience for cuteness we decided it must be dinner time and we wandered over to Roppongi to try somewhere new. Our first attempt to dine at Chien Fu didn't go so well as we found them closed when they should've been open (according to Happy Cow). It must be so difficult to keep up with the changing opening and closing times of thousands of restaurants around the world so I always make sure to drop Happy Cow an email with an update if something like this happens. It really helps other travellers and without our updates information on the site could quickly become outdated. Another thing about Chien Fu is that if you weren't familiar with Japan yet this place could prove hard to find, it is almost exactly where google maps suggests but, as we'd already learnt, in Japan you have to look up! We found a lift tucked away around a corner next to a convenience store and Chien Fu was located on the fourth floor. This vegetarian Taiwanese spot has an English menu and they helpfully mark dishes containing egg with a yellow dot and dishes containing cow's milk with a blue one.

We started with vegetable spring rolls and what we thought were going to be mock meat steamed buns. The buns turned out to be fried though and they were really freaking good. They came with an amazing sweet dipping sauce that made them one of my favourite dishes of the trip.

If there's a black bean dish on a menu you can guarantee that Nick and I will order it and after some deliberating we went with a black bean tofu dish and a sweet and sour dish with cashews, mushrooms and mock chicken.

We had steamed rice on the side and had no problem polishing off the generous (for Japan) portions.

The next day we had shopping on our minds, I say we but I think we all know that Kiddyland was my favourite Japanese store and not Nick's. Nick actually hates shopping except at the cash and carry, apparently giant food is fun to him, or Whole Foods because they usually have vegan cake! Kiddyland is located in Shibuya and has whole floors devoted to both Rilakkuma and Hello Kitty. Best. Ever.

Nick thought that the best thing about Kiddyland was it's proximity to Pure Cafe so we stopped off for more sandwiches and green tea and raspberry muffins. This was yet another delicious Pure Cafe muffin (I tried a delicious orange and carob chip muffin at the beginning of the trip) it had a subtle green tea flavour and the raspberry was in the form of jam which is always a win in both of our books.

Because I'm always thinking ahead we also grabbed banana bread slices for the plane the next day.

Finally we ended our trip with a meal at Ain Soph's Journey location, we'd already visited once right at the beginning of the trip and we were excited to go back. We ordered the fried soy meat plate again because we loved it the first time around. This time was no different and the tender juicy soy meat encased in crispy batter was spot on.

We ordered the veggie paella next which turned out to be a wonderful choice. I love paella and this came with loads of roasted vegetables including one of my fave's, aubergine, and plenty of black olives.

We were feeling pretty stuffed but we didn't want to miss out on one final dessert so we ordered the dessert combo plate to share. It comes with waffles, whipped cream, rum 'n raisin ice cream, a brownie and vanilla pudding.

The waffles were excellent, crisp on the outside, soft inside and covered in syrup. The pudding didn't look particularly appetising and as I hate pudding and vanilla flavour desserts I skipped that part but Nick loved it. The brownie was dense and fudgey and the rice whipped cream was as wonderful as I remembered it being from the pancake plate we'd eaten on our previous visit.

After dinner we took one last walk around the city at night marvelling at the busyness and abundance of neon lights. Tokyo is such an amazing place, I really hope that I get to visit again one day.

Now from the title of this blog post you'd probably think I was done writing about Japan but you'd be wrong! I have another post up my sleeve and it concerns something I spent a lot of time researching, convenience foods. It's not always possible to eat out at a veg friendly spot for every meal especially in a city where almost nothing vegan friendly opens until 11am so I'm putting together a picture guide of the vegan products we discovered at 7/11, Lawson and Family Mart which should help future vegan travellers find quick and easy snacks and meals on the go.

Another year, another birthday blog post!

Last week I was trying to decide what to do for my birthday, I felt overwhelmed with options and that's when I realised that I haven't spent my birthday at home in Brighton for six years. Six! My last Brighton based birthday celebration was before I'd even started this blog! So crazy. I can't believe I've been lucky enough to celebrate my birthday in such amazing places recently, the Monkey Sanctuary in Cornwall (which I'll be re-visiting this summer), London, Berlin, Millencolin Fest' in Sweden and last year's 30th birthday extravaganza in Spain. I adore Brighton so I was super excited to plan a fun day here and Nick and I started with a lazy morning together at home. When I came downstairs there was a helium ballon waiting for me, I love helium balloons, I'm not really sure why but I think they're just super fun and cute!

Nick sneakily bough some Hello Kitty stickers in Japan for decorating future cards and gifts with, he's so adorable!

For breakfast Nick made us our favourite green juice from 365 Vegan Smoothies, it has banana, orange, kale, grapes and lemon juice and I love how frothy it gets. You'd think you wouldn't need a recipe book for smoothies but I'd never made a green juice this good until I bought it so I think it was a good investment! We also had Jus-Rol croissants with loads of Vitalite, two of my favourite accidentally vegan products!

Of course there were presents! Nick gifted me some graphic novels which I was super excited about, I read them so quickly that I find it hard to justify dropping the cash on them so they make excellent presents. He also got me some gorgeous Oracle brass ear weights, I'd been coveting them for a long time so I was super excited and I've been wearing them almost every day!

After our lovely slow start to the day we grabbed a Car Club car and headed for Raystede Animal Sanctuary. It's one of my favourite places to spend time, Nick and I visited last year for an Animal Carer Day and I try to go back whenever I can. I'm looking into volunteering there right now but it's surprisingly difficult to get to without a car.

Our first stop was the cattery, you can't go inside but you can peer through the windows at the kitties being all adorable. I always get so sad reading the reasons why cats end up at the shelter but it made me extra glad we decided to foster Rorschach until we were able to find him a perfect forever home. Our second stop was the goats. Best photobomb!

After a walk around the lake we checked out the donkeys and ponies. I love this part of the sanctuary, it's so beautiful and there are some really little ponies who are obviously super adorable.

Look at their ears! I love donkeys, they're like an extra fluffy horse!

On the way home we listened to one of my gifts, the latest Me First and the Gimme Gimmes CD. I love this band, they play punk rock covers of classics and this has to be the best album they've released for ages. There's even a cover of Cher's Believe complete with ridiculous synths and auto-tune!

We were starving by the time we got back into Brighton so we headed for VBites for one of my favourite meals, the 3Bites plate! It comes with one each of the VBeefy, VFishy and Classic Beefy burgers and a side of fries. I blogged about it with a better picture here, they've definitely made the burgers smaller since the trial period but it's definitely still one of my favourite meals to eat in Brighton right now.

Obviously everyone needs cake on their birthday, or ice cream if that's more your style. One year I'd love to have an ice cream cake, I've never tried one but they sound perfect! I'd had breakfast at Infinity Foods Cafe with some friends a week or so before my birthday and the cakes looked amazing so I was excited to go back. I chose the Chocolate Cheesecake and Nick went for a slice of Chocolate Chip Banana Cake.

I'm not normally the biggest cheesecake fan but this one was tofu based and very mousse like, I really enjoyed it and I'll definitely be going back for more soon. Nick loved his cake too and the little piece I tried was super moist and bananaey with huge chocolate chunks throughout.

That wasn't enough cake for one day though so we wandered down Kensington Gardens and picked up a slice of Lemon, Poppy Seed and Polenta cake and a piece of Chocolate Tiffin from Iydea and a Chocolate Raspberry cupcake from Cloud 9.

I loved the tiffin, it was ridiculously rich and chocolatey and full of chunks of biscuit and cherry. I'll definitely be buying it again. I was a little disappointed by the other two though, the lemon poppyseed tasted strange and I think for me there were just too many poppy seeds which gave each bite an odd mouthfeel. The cupcake from Cloud 9 was ridiculously dry and crumbled as we tried to eat it, the frosting was nicely flavoured but texturally it didn't hit the spot. Cloud 9 have only recently started making vegan cakes and I've seen a promising looking Oreo mud cake whilst walking past so I will be giving something else there a try soon. My recommended spots for cake right now are definitely Infinity Cafe, both of the slices we tried there were excellent, closely followed by the cake we ate recently at Our Cornish Pasty Shop. I'll also give a little shout out to WaiKikaMooKau who stock my Operation Icing cupcakes but don't go out to eat my own cake, that'd just be silly!

After a long day of adventuring in the sun it was time for some quiet time and I read books on the sofa for the rest of the afternoon. Hunger struck early evening and Nick and I got into the kitchen to make some serious birthday food, mac & cheese pizza!

This isn't the greatest pic but as you can probably imagine this pizza was totally ridiculous and delicious and an awesome end to the day!

We'd made the Roasted Red Pepper Mac & Cheese from Isa Does It the previous night so we just needed to slather some jarred pizza sauce on to a store bought base (the Sainsbury's hand stretched kind is my favourite), top it with the mac and then top that with the last of the Follow Your Heart cheese we brought back from NYC in January. For some reason if you shred a block of Follow Your Heart and freeze it for around 6 months it doesn't melt anywhere near as well as before so next time we'll just buy the pre-shreded bags. It was still gooey and close to melty though so it was all okay!

Don't think that my celebrating ended there though! I'm a firm believer in the birthday week especially when your birthday falls on a Tuesday so come Friday evening it was time for the extravaganza to continue. I met Nick when he finished work and we walked down Western Road to Gourmet Pizza Kitchen, a cute little pizzeria that I only heard about a few weeks ago.

GPK have one vegan pizza on the menu, the Vegan Pesto, and then they have vegan cheese so that you can veganise some of the veggie options or create your own. I picked the Vegan Pesto and Nick ordered a Margherita with veggie pepperoni. My vegan pesto pizza was covered in a generous amount of toppings which, as well as the pesto and cheese, included caramelised red onions, black olives (my faves) and cherry tomatoes. I enjoyed it although I think Pizza Face currently holds the best pizza in Brighton crown. The Margherita was definitely slightly lacking in the topping department, I think pizza should be almost drowning in tomato sauce especially if the toppings are as simple as cheese and pepperoni and I think the lack of marinara sauce resulted in a slightly dry pizza. I would definitely go back to GPK, I can't think of many places you can go out to eat vegan pizza in Brighton in the evening (I think it's just here, perhaps La Cucina and Pizza Express where you'd need to take your own cheese or go cheese-less ) and I would order the vegan pesto pizza again, the crust was nice and thin and I liked the restaurant itself.

It was definitely a good plan to fill up on food because our next stop was Boho Gelato's frozen cocktail night held at Slice Sussex. I've been to this event a couple of times before and I last blogged about it back when the event began. I've always thoroughly enjoyed it and this time was no different. We were meeting some of the friends I've made in the last year from the local vegan group on Meet Up and I'm still so glad I bit the bullet and joined last year. Working from home isn't the best way to make local friends and whilst I have some amazing buddies scattered all over the world I felt like I was lacking in local mates to grab food or beers with on a regular basis.

The menu at the cocktail night is always split into two, dairy and non-dairy. Non dairy doesn't always mean vegan but they'd done their research and knew that the Campari in the Boho Aperitivo needed to be replaced with something else.

I love lemon so the Limoncello Classic seemed to be a good place to start the evening, this gorgeous frothy delight definitely ended up being my favourite cocktail of the night. I think I could drink these all day. I won't, but I totally could!

The next drink I tried was the Hendricks + Cucumber Slushy and before the event it was one of the drinks I was most excited about. Unfortunately I think it worked better on paper than in reality. It wasn't a slushy and I think the rose in the rose and cucumber sorbet distracted from the gin cucumber combo that should have been delicious.

Lastly I tried the Boho Aperitivo which consisted of blood orange sorbet, limoncello and gin. This was apparently better than the kind with the Campari which I'm counting as a win for veganism.

This night's not only good for the drinkers among us though, the guys behind the bar were quite happy to whip up some non alcoholic cocktails for the sober among us and they were a super bargain at £2!

My third and final birthday celebration took place yesterday afternoon at the lovely Terre à Terre, somewhere I will always find an excuse to visit! Nick and my bff's Tabitha and Sal were more than happy to accompany me for afternoon tea. The vegan friendliness of the tea is pretty new and we were all excited to try it. Sal and I upgraded our tea to prosecco for £6 extra which is a wonderful choice for anyone celebrating something or for people like me who just dislike hot drinks!

I won't give you a full run down of everything on the tiers, some people will want to be surprised and the rest of you can read the full descriptions on the online menu here. The tea is designed to move from salty to sweet to sweeter and I loved this approach.

The savoury tea layer included some beautiful local heirloom tomatoes in a multitude of colours which accompanied some of my favourite nori crackers. There were also sesame crusted tofu bites and one of my favourite menu items, the Arepas Chilli Candy which even I can manage to eat as long as I remove the biggest chunks of chilli from the sticky sauce!

The sweet tier came next and I was so impressed with it that I took a picture of it separately. You can also see the gorgeous hand painted card Tabitha made me in the background, she's ridiculously talented.

There were a couple of mini churros each, and the two little polenta cakes, one with an orange filling and one with a chocolate filling were delightful bite sized treats. I enjoyed the snappy pistachio wafer way more than I thought I would and the little chocolate cake with freeze dried raspberries was also delightful.

Lastly we ate the scones, two little ones each which was perfect. They were served with almond cream and homemade jam. I would have loved to see some homemade vegan butter here as that's how I usually roll with crumpets but this was still wonderful and everyone else agreed that the cream / jam option is more traditional.

I had such an amazing birthday week surrounded by friends (human and animal), eating great food and generally living it up! I also really appreciated everyone who tweeted or instagrammed birthday wishes in my direction, you're all lovely! Bring on 32, who knows where I'll be!

Osaka, Hiroshima & Ōkunoshima (aka Bunny Island)

We were reluctant to leave the vegan foodie paradise that is Kyoto, four days really didn't seem like enough time and we definitely hadn't seen and eaten everything on our long lists. But our journey had to continue and we were excited about the change of pace that would come along with our next destination, Osaka. Situated just 30 minutes by train from Kyoto Osaka is slightly further off of the well beaten tourist path but it was high up on our must visit list due to the promise of neon lit streets, great shopping and lively nightlife districts. They also have a small but thriving veggie food scene and we headed for Green Earth first due to it's proximity to the youth fashion district of Amerikamura, one of the first stops on our Osakan shopping adventure.

On this occasion Nick chose a simple creamy soy sausage spaghetti dish which he loved.

I enjoyed the daily lunch plate which came with a stir fried veggie chicken dish, two salads, brown rice and a side of miso soup.

Dessert was the standout of this meal for me as I had chosen the tofu cheesecake, something I was enjoying a lot of on our trip around Japan. I need to learn to bake one so if anyone has a tried and tested recipe send it my way! I've never been a fan of the super sweet US style cheesecakes and this lightly sweetened slice was one of my favourites of the whole trip.

Green Earth is a great little family run spot with a varied menu, perfect for our first lunch in the city. We loved chatting to owner Ryoji and on our second visit we also met his wife Junko and talked more about international veganism, baking, travel and, of course, my tattoos. They're truly wonderful people and if we're in the city again we'll definitely be swinging by to say hi.

One place we needed to try just for the novelty factor was Chabuton, a ramen joint where you order at the machine. We headed to the location in a food court on one of the top levels of a huge mall after a long afternoon exploring Shinsaibashi Suji, Osaka's main undercover shopping area. We were sad to discover that the spring special ramen, the only one apparently made with vegetable stock, was no longer on the menu. Chabuton have another veggie ramen on the regular menu but it's made with fish stock so we ended up ordering 4 plates of their vegan friendly vegetarian gyoza.

The soy sauce that comes with the gyoza is reported as containing fish on Happy Cow but of course we were carrying the handy tiny bottle of Kikkoman we had picked up at a 7/11 on the first day of the trip. These were really great gyoza and I'm sure they'd be delicious sauce free if carrying your own condiments is a step too far for you!

The next day, the last of our flyby visit, we headed back to Green Earth for sandwiches and pastries. Green Earth make their own vegan cheese but they only had enough left for half a sandwich so I had cheese on the bottom half and avocado on the top half, a perfect compromise, and this was a great sandwich. They should totally add this mix and match option to the menu permanently!

We both had apple pies for dessert which were served hand pie style. I love apple pie in any format and these shortcrust pastry pies were light, warm and comforting.

Green Earth also sell scones, tea cakes, muffins and cookies to take away.

We picked up an earl grey cookie, two matcha tea cake slices and a pumpkin muffin. We saved most of them for breakfast the next day and enjoyed them all especially the pumpkin muffin, that was definitely my favourite.

That night after more exploring (um, shopping) we sat outside Starbucks for some matcha soy lattes and a spot of people watching. I swear I could sit and people watch for hours when I travel, especially in a city like Osaka where the youth fashion is so fascinating.

The next morning we bid adiau to Osaka and headed for Hiroshima. First stop, the Peace Memorial Park and Museum. It's hard to put our experience there into words, it's certainly the most hard hitting museum I've ever visited and it certainly didn't shift my anti war / anti nuke stance. I will never understand why people think nuclear weapons (or any weapons!) are okay. Whenever a country conducts nuclear weapons tests the mayor of Hiroshima writes to them asking them to stop and to never do it again, these letters are all displayed in the museum. Once you've seen the devastation caused by these bombs I don't know how you could support testing nukes. It makes no sense to me.

After a long walk and some peaceful time spent reflecting on the horrors of war it was time to check into our hostel before scoping out Hiroshima's cruelty free dining options. We picked K's House hostel both because of it's proximity to the station and the centre of the city and because they had private traditional rooms which meant we were able to have the tatami mat sleeping experience without shelling out a fortune at a more upscale ryokan.

There aren't many vegan friendly spots in Hiroshima and sadly the place we did try, Vegan Cafe, had closed before we'd even left the country. I'll show you the food I ate anyway because it was delicious.

Green Smoothie made with soy milk, greens and bananas. Nick loved this, if I even detect the slightest milkiness in my smoothies I have to force it down but aside from my weirdness I'm sure it was great!

Lunch plate, you picked three dished from the menu and then they came with brown rice, salad and miso soup to make a complete meal.

Dessert was a toasted chocolate chip muffin and a gorgeous slice of pineapple cake. I am a little allergic to pineapple but this tiny sugar-glaze covered piece was fine and there was no way I could skip such a beautifully presented dessert.

Hiroshima does have one vegetarian cafe and a couple of veg friendly spots left so don't despair and check Happy Cow before heading out to eat.

Another reason for our trip to Hiroshima was that it's day trip distance from Ōkunoshima aka Bunny Island. To get there we took a Sanyō Shinkansen train to Mihara followed by a local Kure line train to Tadanoumi. You can tell you're in the right place as soon as you alight the train!

It's then a short walk (just out of the station, turn right and follow the road around) to the small port where we purchased tickets from the booth and boarded a tiny boat heading for the island. We felt so lucky to have ended up making this journey on the most beautiful day of the entire trip, it was perfect.

There are a couple of stories addressing how and why Ōkunoshima came to be overrun by rabbits but the most realistic and believable is that during the war Ōkunoshima housed a poison gas factory and their chemical weapons were tested on rabbits. Once the war came to an end the factories shut up shop and released the bunnies. As the old adage goes they bred like rabbits and soon the island was full of the gorgeous little creatures.

As soon as you hop off of the boat you can hop onto the mini bus which will drive you (very slowly) around to the spa hotel which is where you will find one of the largest concentrations of bunnies on the island. You can see bunnies as soon as you arrive at the port and the bus drives slowly so as not to frighten or disturb our furry friends. Apparently you can buy food for the rabbits at the hotel but we could not work out what, where or how and nor did we see anyone else doing this but it didn't matter because we had carrots (a small amount as we know bunnies shouldn't have too much carrot) and a lovely Japanese family shared some of their huge bag of cabbage with us.

You can hire bicycles and no cars are allowed on the island as it is part of the Inland Sea National Park. We chose to walk and we got around the whole thing on foot with no trouble. Everywhere we went there were more bunnies.

As well as being full of adorable rabbits Ōkunoshima is beautiful and I loved the juxtaposition of stunning scenery and creepy dilapidated buildings.

As we had arrived towards the end of March it was bunny season and the little tiny rabbits were everywhere. It took us hours to walk around the island because we obviously had to stop and interact with every rabbit we saw.

Pictures don't do the bunnies justice so I'll leave you with the video Nick and I put together, I hope you like the music it's one of my favourite Kyary Pamyu Pamyu songs!

Our Cornish Pasty Shop

Back when I worked as a body piecer at Punktured I ate at Our Cornish Pasty Shop, formerly known as I's Pies, at least twice a week. I always ordered the same thing, took awful pictures of it in the basement of the shop and then never blogged about it because of the aforementioned awful photographs.

Last Saturday after a disappointing trip to Duke's at Komedia, the vegan hot dogs now come in a very non vegan brioche bun, Nick and I were left with 25 minutes until our movie and some decision making to do. Luckily Komedia is situated smack bang in the centre of Gardner Street and we realised that there were six places we could get to, eat food, and be back in time for the trailers. This is one of the many reasons I love Brighton. We decided on Our Cornish Pasty Shop as Nick had never been, I hadn't ventured over the threshold for years, and we had a hankering for pastry.

Our Cornish Pasty Shop make three kinds of vegan pasties as well as a vegan sausage roll and they're even labelled on the menu behind the counter - bottom right, see?

Nick went for the Vegan Wholemeal pasty and I conjured up memories of lunch times past with the Vegan Sausage Roll.

The wholemeal pasty is stuffed full of veggies including the traditional potato as well as pulses and lentils in a tomato and herb sauce. Nick let me have a bite and I would definitely order it myself sometime. The sausage roll strays pretty far from tradition but I love it all the same, sage and onion stuffing with sun-dried tomatoes is a great combo and, y'know, I ate this twice a week for years, if that's not an endorsement I don't know what is!

Just as we were leaving and heading for Infinity Foods for a spot of dessert (Vego bars were calling our name!) I spotted two kinds of vegan cake. I remembered that they'd always had vegan mince pies around Christmas time but I had totally forgotten that Ian's wife makes amazing vegan cakes. We grabbed one piece of Chocolate Banana Slab and one piece of Orange Cake.

These were both so good that rather than just photographing them and having a little taste we'd devoured them both before even entering the cinema. Chocolate banana isn't usually a favourite combination of mine but I loved this, the banana flavour complimented rather than overpowered the chocolate and the biscuity pieces were a great addition. It's a super dense and moist dessert & I'll definitely order it again. The orange cake was light, fluffy and delicious and I always enjoy a simple sugar glaze as opposed to mountains of buttercream which you'll understand is a little ridiculous if you've seen my bakery Operation Icing's cakes! I think it was my favourite of the two but it's really hard to decide.

I'm super excited that I've become reacquainted with this place after a few years of drifting past it in a daze on my way to other places and I'm pretty certain I'm going to become something of a regular again.