Japan Trip 2018/2019 Part 2 Kyoto Gyukatsu and Hanamaru Udon

Judge Eyes posters at a karaoke in Kabukicho. If you have not heard of Judge Eyes, its basically Kimutaku in a yakuza game.

I'm pretty sure jdorama fans can recognise the actors in the posters. I'm currently in chapter 8 and I am sad that Tanihara Shosuke's role is not bigger.

Picture of me and Kimutaku. Went to the Sega Arcade opposite APA hotel to buy some Sega and Ryu ga Gotoku merchandise! It took a lot of tries to get me to took decent with the helmet cause my head's really big.

Wrestle Kingdom poster on the Yamanote line. I didn't go because we had other plans. Not sure I would have gone even if we did not have plans.

I wanted to go eat at Tonta in Takadanobaba but unfortunately it was closed. The bad thing about going Japan end of the year is that many places are closed. Went to Narikura instead and they have a new waiting system where you get allocated a slot instead and I did not want to wait 1 1/2 hours for tonkatsu, no matter how delicious.

I didn't know where else to go in Takadanobaba and we stumbled upon Kyoto Gyukatsu.

I wasn't impressed with the gyukatsu zen.

However, the gyukatsu tare don tasted much better.

 And its pretty cheap as well.

Next stop was Tokyu Hands in Ikebukuro where we stumbled upon this SNK shop!

I'm kind of regretting not getting anything because its not like SNK goods are easy to get one's hands on but I spent a lot of them antagonising whether to buy stuff especially the KoF2002UM poster but ultimately decided that I'm not into SNK stuff as I used to.

Now if they had a KOF98 poster, I would be all over it.

And we went to Hanamaru for dinner. There is this udon chain in Melbourne which I quite like called Udon Yassan and I've been noticing this Hanamaru udon chain everywhere during my Japan trip so I wanted to see what it was like and for the first time ever, not everything is better in Japan.

The soup and beef for Hanamaru was pretty bad. Udon Yassan is so much better than this Japanese chain which is doing so well for some reason. It was pretty shocking how a chain can be successful and not be good.

I love all the chain eateries like Matsuya, Yoshinoya, Katsuya but Hanamaru is just bad. That being said, I have no idea where to get decent udons in Japan.

Trying to win this Maid in Abyss cloth thingie. Basically you had to stop the light at the correct place to make the hand drop. Easier said than done. I know I promised Anata no Warehouse but I'll leave that for the next post or else this post will be too long.