Category Archives: Reviews

Hung Kiew Kee Restaurant, Sarikei

On the road to Sibu, through the verdant hills and countryside of Sarawak

On the road to Sibu

I wrote earlier about taking my mom (during her recent visit from Honolulu) to the Sarawak Cultural Village here in Kuching. Chronologically though, Kuching wasn’t the first place she visited when she arrived in Malaysia. About a week before she arrived, our good friend Mike told us that he was going back to his hometown of Sibu for a few days, and invited us, including my mom, to come join him. After confirming with her, we accepted his invitation.

The only problem was, Mike requested we arrive in Sibu on Saturday night, and my mom was set to fly in to Kuching from Singapore at noon that very day. It would mean picking her up, bringing her home for a very brief stop, then heading back out in the early afternoon to make the 6 hour drive to meet Mike in Sarikei where we would have dinner before continuing on to Sibu. We left Kuching around 2 pm.

Continue reading Hung Kiew Kee Restaurant, Sarikei

Hakatakko Ramen Shop, Machida

After passing on the tonkotsu ramen at the Yokohama Ramen Museum on our first day in Japan, we never got around to having ramen again until the last day in Japan.  Could you blame us? We were caught up with delicious plates at Za-Watami Izakaya in Shonandai, a classy meal at Maimon in Yokohama, and an exquisite kaiseki dinner at Maru in Aoyama. We almost ran out of time!

Tonkotsu Ramen at Hakatakko Ramen Shop, Machida

tonkotsu ramen machida

Our last full day in Japan was the one I most looked forward to because I got to spend the whole day with my friend Yuko, someone who I knew from my school days in Hawaii.  I had told Yuko I was coming and even though she was working in Korea, she happened to be back in Japan at just the right time. So we arranged to meet up on Friday.

Continue reading Hakatakko Ramen Shop, Machida

The Magic Faraway Tree Collection

This is a guest book review by Daniel (8) who has been engrossed in reading and re-reading The Magic Faraway Tree collection by Enid Blyton. We started out reading chapters together as bedtime stories but Daniel enjoyed them so much, he took to reading the books on his own time. We are doing this book report in an interview format for which Daniel typed out his answers and I (Nate) did a little punctuation cleanup.

Daniel reading The Magic Faraway Tree

Continue reading The Magic Faraway Tree Collection

Sushi Dinner at Asahisushi, Machida

We eat fugu (pufferfish / blowfish) sushi in Japan and live to tell about it.

Little Fugu

baby fugu by furibond on flickrphoto by Furibond. (License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic).

Ever since we first started talking about this Japan trip, we wanted to go see the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest fish market in the world. We love good sushi, and it can’t get any better than eating it right at Tsukiji. Annie actually did go and have sushi at Tsukiji one day, but I was at work and couldn’t join her. So we made plans to go to Tsukiji at night after work.

Unfortunately, the plans fell through and we ended up having an awesome kaiseki dinner in Aoyama that night instead. In the meantime, our friend Akiko, who had guided us to a great meal at Za-Watani Izakaya, suggested that we not go to Tsukiji at night. She recommended going to a restaurant closer to us and put our money into sushi rather than train tickets. Brilliant!

She even found us a sushi restaurant that advertised their fish as being from Tsukiji Market: Asahisushi, located on the 9th floor of the Odakyu Department Store, right above Machida Station. Annie was spending the day in Tokyo with her good friend Yuko, so we decided to meet at Machida Station after work and then go up for dinner.

Continue reading Sushi Dinner at Asahisushi, Machida