On the 6th of November we shall be having a Mizutaki nabe and Takoyaki party in our YadoCafe and we welcome all our guests and friends to join us.
For those who dont know,
Mizutaki is a type of nabe(Japanese hot pot) which contains chicken and vegetables, and served with the dipping sauces, ponzu, a citrus based sauce and gomadare, a sesami sauce.
While Takoyaki (literally fried octopus) is a dish made famous in Osaka are a type of Japanese dumplings made of batter, pieces of octopus and other vegetables ,taking the shape of balls served with mayonnaise and special sauce.
The party will start at 7:30, food will be served at 8:00pm, and finish at 10pm.
It is 1000 yen for all you can eat nabe and Takoyaki, so if you have some free time on that night please come and enjoy eating and meeting new people.
You can also try your hand at making some takoyaki if you dare!
2009年10月アーカイブ
To say good bye to the silver week we decided to take a stroll to one of the most sought after towns to live in Tokyo. Kichijoji has been named numerous times as the most popular city in Tokyo and we went to investigate why.
It was lucky that it was a beautiful day and so We started off in Inokashira park, one of the main attractions of the town.
Since it was a holiday we encountered many families, couples enjoying the holiday and people walking their dogs.
We found a spot under some trees with a nice view of the lake and started our picnic. 
Inokashira Park
Picnic time!!
We were getting attacked by a few caterpillars during the picnic!
The park is quite long and there is a nice pond in the middle making it
a great place to have a nice walk,a picnic or enjoy a boat ride with
your girlfriend or family. The park is also home to a small zoo with
some local Japanese animals a shrine
A view of the beautiful pond in the park
After the picnic we went around the park and visited the park's shrine
which is dedicated to a vengeful goddess of love. There is a myth that
any couples which take a bot in the pond will be broken up soon after.
To avoid this, the couple come to the shrine before having their
romantic boat ride.
Swan boats! How romantic!!
The shrine and its Jealous Goddess
A view of the pond from the shrine
Every weekend and holidays there is a art market, where musicians perform and art vendors so we were lucky to see many things on that day ranging from strange instruments to paintings of all kind.
The park is so big and there so were many things to see that we for got what time it was and we didn't have a chance to visit the zoo as we planned.
Later we went to check out the small shopping district called Harmonica Yokocho. 
The name comes from the shape of a that the small streets make together to form the district look similar to a harmonica . This shopping district that has over 100 little stores crammed together side by side or across from each other used to be a black market after the war, and it has been left like it is since that time.
Unfortunately, many of the shops were closed due to the holiday so we didn't get the full experience that Harmonica Yokocho had to offer.
Harmonica Yokocho is buried in the new malls of Kichijoji, so it is an interesting mix of old style shops and new shops and department stores.
The Shopping side of Kichijoji.
All in all Kichijoji is an amazing town. It has everything one might want without having to leave the town itself, with lots of places to shop, a place to spend a relaxing day and a mixture of new and old, its no wonder people wish to live in this town, myself included !
We were invited for the wedding of our guest last weekend.
They were our guests and met each other at our guesthouse HANAMI party. We are so glad that they get married! This is so special for us.
The party was so fun!
Congratulations!!
