Tokyo: Shopping and Sushi Making (Charlotte and Sam)

Last week we traveled to Japan to ski. However, because our ski resort was not close to an airport, we flew into Tokyo and spent a night in the city before and after our week skiing. 

One of the places I wanted to visit was the big Hello Kitty Sanrio store. We rode the subway from our hotel. It wasn't far. The store had a huge wall filled with Hello Kitty stuffies. It was shaped like a heart and my dad took a picture of me. 

 

One of my favorite things about the Hello Kitty store was seeing all the stuffies. I got to bring one home. It was a Hello Kitty stuffy that has a zippered pocket behind her head. Inside the pocket is a pink Hello Kitty reuseable shopping bag. It is practical and cute. Hello Kitty is dressed in a Japanese kimono. The stuffy also has a clip to attach to my purse. (My purse is special because I made it in Taipei at a kids craft station. I used a sewing machine for the first time and a lady who spoke English helped me),

Another experience we had in Tokyo was making sushi by hand. We made two kinds of sushi: maki and nigiri. First, you weigh the rice, then spread it on your seaweed sheet. Then you layer strips of fish on the rice and roll everything together into a tube shape using a plastic or bamboo slotted mat. 

Then you gently press the roll to shape everything. Finally, you unroll the mat and cut the sushi into slices. This is maki. 

To make nigiri, you weigh the rice and use your hand to shape it into an oval shape; it looks like a cloud. Then you place one slice of fish on top of your rice cloud. This is how you make nigiri. In the picture below, the nigiri sushi is on the outer edges of the board.

 

After we made our sushi, we ate it for lunch! I like sushi, but this sushi wasn't my favorite. We had tuna and not salmon. Salmon is my favorite. For dessert we ate fish cakes. These are not cakes made out of fish. The cakes are baked in the shape of a small fish and stuffed with different sweet fillings. There was red bean, custard, and sweet potato. We tried the red bean and custard. The custard was very hot and I had to eat it carefully because I didn't want to burn my mouth. Custard was my favorite flavor. Red bean was my mom's favorite flavor.