Best hamburgers in Stockholm

I have a friend in Sweden who I first met when I was too young to remember (maybe 3 years old or so?) and we still keep in touch. We like the same types of movies, the same types of music, the same types of food, etc. He told me he had found the best hamburger place in Stockholm, so we went there for lunch. They indeed had great hamburgers.

They also served ice cream. And the servings were pretty large...

Sapporo DaiDonDen street performance festival 2016, day 2

Really tiny balls of ice cream for lunch

The second day of the DaiDonDen street performance festival I was also supposed to go to the wedding of one of my friends, so I did not really have time to see much of the festival. Since another friend was actually performing at the festival, I went to see her performance, though.

I also saw the juggler Kohei, who is (or at least used to be) a student at my university. He is good.

One of my friends was performing in a salsa dance group. After they finished, there was also some belly dancing in the same performance slot.

I also managed to catch the end of another performance by Morita the juggler before I had to go the wedding.

When I was watching the juggling, I spotted a man from Tokyo that I know a little. He remembered me from doing lots of magic tricks for him that he had no idea how they were done. Despite him watching a lot of magic in many different places all over Japan, and mostly understanding how magic is done. So he decided to give me a huge paper tube with an enormous spring inside of it (so when you open it, a fake snake that is really big shoots out). I appreciate the gift, but the timing was not that great, since I ended up walking around with this in my hand the whole night at the wedding and various after parties.

Three types of cheese ice cream

In Japan they keep coming up with weird flavors for ice cream. I bought an ice cream that had cream cheese, cheddar cheese, and camenbert cheese in it. It was not good.

Weird English and weirdly shaped ice cream

There is a series of ice cream called Pino that come in boxes of six round ice cream blobs covered in chocolate. The most common is vanilla ice cream in chocolate. There are many variations with berry flavors, coffee flavor, caramel coating, or whatnot. They also have heart shaped and star shaped items in some boxes. I found one heart and one star recently. In some boxes you can find up to six weirdly shaped ones. But that is apparently incredibly rare.

When eating ice cream I walked past a sign in "English" describing some construction work going on. I think they meant to say something like "To help blind people and people who do not walk so well, we are doing some changes to the sidewalk. We appreciate your understanding.", but it came out a bit different...

Tiny playing cards and free ice cream

A friend of mine had mentioned that there was a shop very close to my home that sells really tiny decks of cards. I finally managed to go there when they were open. I bought six decks of cards, which probably made me the highest paying customer in months, since all the stuff they sell (except the cards) go for like 10 yen or so, and I ended up shopping for 6500 yen.

So the owner gave me an ice cream for free. Yeay!

When I entered the shop, there was an old grandmother and a six year old boy there shopping already. The owner looked at me and then asked me: "Are you together?" pointing at them. Perhaps he though I was a relative, haha?

Ice cream hot dog

I found a place that sold strange hot dogs. They had gyoza (Chinese dumplings) hot dogs and ice cream hot dogs. I ordered an ice cream hot dog to see what that was. It was ice cream in hot bread. Not bad, but a bit hard to eat without getting melted ice cream all over the place.

Going back to Saitama

After a pretty tiring but very fun day in Tokyo, we took one of the last trains back to Saitama. These trains are incredibly packed with people in the mornings. They are super long and completely full. Once the platform starts to become slightly visible again after one train unloads all the commuters, the next train is already arriving, so you almost cannot cross the platform in rush hour. Late at night the trains are more credibly packed, but we still had to stand.

I found something called "rusk ice cream". Rusk is a hard biscuit and ice cream is not hard, so this made me curious. I bought one just to see what it would be like. It turned out to be normal chocolate ice cream. Why they decided to call it "rusk ice cream" remained a mystery.

In Japan you can find all kinds of strange and sometimes wonderful bread, like this breakfast bacon and egg bread.

Ice cream related photos

I passed a place that had an "all the ice cream you can eat" special deal, but no one else wanted to go there.

My brother mentioned that Ben&Jerry's ice cream is popular in Sweden now. We talked about how in Japan they sell ice cream mainly in small packs suitable for one person (and one person who eats the tiny amounts that people do here, haha), so maybe that is why you never see Ben&Jerry's in Japan. As we finished this conversation, we passed a fridge in a supermarket that was stacked full of tiny Ben&Jerry's cups.

Häagen-Dazs is common in Japan. When in Saitama, I noticed a Häagen-Dazs that said that it is only available for a short limited time. It looked interesting, and I had never seen it in Sapporo. I figured this meant I had to try this before leaving Saitama, even though my trips to visit Saitama generally consist of eating bizarre amounts of food all the time, so buying more things to eat yourself is not really recommended. I tried it, it was good, and I felt like Mr Creosote. When I got back to Sapporo, it turned out that this is actually available here too. I just happened to time my Saitama trip so that I left Sapporo the day the started selling this ice cream in Japan...

Rabupi ice cream? Lingonberry ice cream?

Near the parking lot close to the suspension bridge, there was a small shop selling ice cream. They had bitter green tea (matcha), of course. They also had something called the "twin" which had both "yama momo" (presumably peach, from "yama" for mountain and "momo" meaning peach) and "rabupii". I had no idea what "rabupii" might be, and when I asked our Japanese relatives they also had no idea. I decided to order a rabupii ice cream to see what it might be. It turned out to be strawberry, and on other signs with the same photo it just said "strawberry" in Japanese...

Peach and rabupii

When I ate my ice cream I told my brother that it was "disappointingly normal". Some Japanese couple that happened to walk by at that moment looked at me and laughed and said "Normal?" I clarified that it was not bad, it was pretty good, but not special. Just normal good strawberry ice cream. They then gave up on buying their own ice cream.

At our next rest stop on the way back, I saw a place selling "koke momo" ice cream. This is a word that means "moss peaches" if you translate it literally, which is a funny word. In English, these berries are called lingonberries, and they are very common and popular in Sweden. You would not see lingonberry ice cream very often in Sweden, though. But I bought one, and it did indeed taste like lingonberries.

Shopping mall of the gods

In Caesar's Palace there is a huge shopping mall and my friends wanted to go there. The interior is very nice. There are skies painted on the ceilings and huge Roman style statues and ruins throughout.

The Swedish chain H&M had a very nice looking store in the mall.

I passed a huge aquarium with various fish swimming around in it.

Woman riding a bomb

Curved escalators are rare (there is one in Yokohama that I have seen before).

Is this a banana ice cream bar?

The convenience store in the building where I live now sells something that is called: "Is this a banana ice cream bar?" Which makes me wonder if it is a banana ice cream bar or not. Having a question mark in the product name looks a bit suspicious...

Update: I bought one and checked. It is a banana ice cream bar.

Dars ice cream

A year or two ago, the DARS chocolate company produced two excellent ice cream products. They quickly disappeared, though. Now, there is a new DARS ice cream product. It is not as good as the previous releases, but it is still pretty good.

Soup curry without soup

My friends from Sweden who are visiting Sapporo now told me that they had found a place that serves "soup curry without soup". This sounded strange and interesting, so yesterday we went there together.

Well, actually, soup curry without soup sounds like you would get normal curry. And it was kind of true. The menu just seed "beef curry" or "chicken curry", like any curry shop in Japan. The curry was not normal Japanese curry and the taste was closer to the taste of soup curry than to the taste of "normal" Japanese curry.

The vegetables were also soup curry style. The types of vegetables used were the same ones that are common in soup curry (but different from normal curry). They were also not boiled in the curry and they were not cut up into small pieces (which would be the norm for Japanese curry).

The food also came with a salad that had an extremely nice dressing. I also ordered a yuzu flavored lassi that came with "chocolate and banana" ice cream. Both very good.

The interior decoration was nice, and the guy serving us was also very nice.

The menus were hidden inside covers that sported the titles of very old books

Ice cream flavored chocolate

Our coop now sells ice cream flavored chocolate. Or more accurately chocolate that has the flavor of the non-ice cream parts of some strange ice cream you can buy in Japan. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Karamel sutra

I saw some ice cream called "Karamel Sutra", which is a clever name.

Weird ice cream series: Tomato and Carrot

A while back I saw some American mention on the Internet that "in Japan they have all kinds of weird flavors for ice cream" and he exemplified with two Häagen-Dazs flavors: tomato and carrots. He also said he wanted them to start selling those flavors in America so he could try them too.

I figured that since I am in Japan, I should look for these. Yesterday I saw both flavors in the convenience store across the street from my home. It seems to be a series of vegetable ice cream flavors called "SpoonVege".

The tomato and cherry flavor was not good. It was not as disgusting as the "cream stew" ice cream I tried before, but it was not good.

The carrot and orange one was better, but I would still not pay money to eat that flavor again.

Tomato sauce pasta-flavored ice cream

The convenience store in the house I live in now sells "gari gari rich, Napolitan aji". This means "crunchy, rich flavored Tomato sauce pasta-flavored ice cream". Pasta "Napolitan" means pasta with tomato sauce (or in most cases ketchup) and sausages. The "gari gari kun" ice cream series has now started selling a pasta Napolitan flavored ice cream bar...

This is the same series that brought us the horrible cream stew ice cream.