Today’s breakfast consisted of toast, a smear of butter, a 3-minute egg and some sea salt and pepper. Not a bad way to start the weekend.

Finding good food is a top priority when Ben and I travel. It puts you in touch with the country’s culture and connects you with its people. I, unfortunately, don’t read or speak any Japanese (except for a handful of vocabulary) but Ben buckled down a couple of months before our trip and learned enough to get us around comfortably, order food, and even ask for recommendations. Here’s a collection of some of our favorite meals in Tokyo.

first dinner in Tokyo

curry dog taiyaki -- better than it sounds

my favorite thing we ate -- New Year's ozoni

we searched hard for this one -- daifuku mochi

grilled buns with various fillings

New Year's festival food -- candied strawberry

not just any old steamed potato

street cart okinomiyaki

5am breakfast at Tsukiji Fish Market -- uni, toro, and tamago

still warm sweet potato mochi in kawagoe

the best salmon onigiri I've ever eaten

second breakfast of the day -- strawberry and chestnut mochi

one of many, many crepes

our last lunch -- pretty and delicious

These meals anchor all the good memories we made in Tokyo. We’ve always had great food experiences while traveling in Japan, and this trip was no different.

Happy New Year, friends!

Ben and I just got back from a fantastic winter trip to Japan where we spent the better part of the week wandering the streets of Tokyo and eating everything we could get our hands on. A photo-filled post of all the deliciousness we encountered is coming, but I wanted to dedicate one to the wonderful breakfast we had each morning before we started our day.

Before heading back to our hotel every night, we would stop at a convenience store (AMPMs dominated our block) and pick up some juice and a container of yogurt. Ben would get up early in the morning and walk up the street to the neighborhood Doutor coffee shop and pick us up some coffee and occasionally a muffin to supplement our convenience store finds.

It was the perfect way to start each morning; we fell in love with Japanese yogurt and were delighted to find drip coffee and grapefruit juice — two things that are difficult to come by in Korea.

Maybe Japanese yogurt only tastes this good if you’re on vacation… but we’re pretty sure it would be awesome anytime.

When this cheesecake store opened in our neighborhood Hyundai Department Store, there was always a line of customers. Ben and I made a mental note to come back and try it sometime when the wait wasn’t so long.

It’s been about a year now and we finally remembered to give it a chance. Cino’s is originally a Japanese chain. Unlike their American counterparts, these desserts are actually cake (no cream cheese filling) and, matching Asian tastes, light and barely sweetened. The consistency was like foam, almost dissolving on our tongues.

Out of all the Asian-style cheesecakes we’ve had over the past year or so, this is by far the best — but I’m not sure we would wait in line for it.

early morning jagalchi fish market

octopus (octopi?)

breakfast of blue crab soup

banchan

more fish

unagi

ho dduk at the PIFF plaza

Back in September, Ben and I caught the KTX and took a quick weekend trip down to Busan. Even though the weather was still hot, tourist season was over so the beaches were gloriously uncrowded. We spent two days wandering around the city, checking out Jagalchi Fish Market (the largest in the country), eating fresh seafood for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and relaxing on the beach.

We didn’t even mind the pungent smell of raw fish basking in the hot afternoon sun.

brownie and milk tea

kimchi jjigae

grilled shellfish at seoraksan

more milk tea at mmmg cafe

breakfast at the frying pan

french fry covered hot dog

Fall is always short and sweet wherever I live, whether it’s Wisconsin or Seoul. It’s unfortunate since it’s my favorite season, but winter is definitely here and we’re ready for it. Bring on the clementines, persimmons and vendors selling freshly roasted chestnuts! And here’s hoping that our next post won’t take me another month!

Has it already been over a month since our last post? Wow. We did not plan to be posting so infrequently, but life has been busy for both of us and with what little free time we have, we’ve had trouble getting around to food blogging. But Ben and I gave ourselves a little pep talk tonight over dinner and promised we’d do a better job from now on.

The problem with going long periods of time between posts is the amount of pressure you feel to write something exceptional when you finally do sit down in front of the computer. Ben and I recently took a weekend trip down to Gyeongju, and I was hoping to photograph all the delicious things we ate out in the countryside and have our next post be one giant photo series. As it turns out, Gyeongju is not exactly known for good food. In fact, we hear now it’s better known for a lack of it. We certainly found this to be true, as most of our meals were barely memorable, let alone blogworthy.

Disappointed, I put off posting for another week…and then another and now, here we are. Pressure…

Tonight I decided that I’ve waited long enough. This post might not be epic, but it does include good food, which is really the only criteria we had when starting Something-Tasty. So here’s our quick and easy dinner from tonight: chili tofu and broccoli.

It’s a simple Sunday night meal that we threw together using ingredients from our fridge that were dangerously close to becoming inedible. The inspiration was found on this beautiful food blog (which found the recipe on this blog).

Toss some tofu with corn starch and fry up until golden brown. All some onions, a ton of garlic, and chili sauce (we doctored it with a little honey and lots of ginger). Towards the end of cooking, I added some broccoli and topped it all with sesame seeds. Done and done. A solid cure for the pre-Monday blues, and a little inspiration for the week ahead.

Fighting jetlag and starting new jobs were difficult enough tasks, but the first couple months in Korea were especially hard for one reason in particular: no coffee maker. Both Janice and I worked as baristas for stretches during and after our college years, and our love for good, strong brew runs deep.

After a bit of searching, I was able to come up with a hand grinder and a Panasonic coffee mate. All that remained was findings beans — tricky in a country still in love with Maxwell House. While some cafes here sell their own roasts, they often taste a bit…off (I would guess due to a lack of training). Because of that, we’ve been relying mostly on care packages from home. But I was hopeful after reading about Beautiful Coffee in an article on World Fair Trade Day, and found a 200g bag of their Nepal roast (organic and fair trade) at a small shop near my work.

Neither one of us had tried Nepalese coffee before, and admittedly weren’t even aware it was a coffee-producing region. The beans smelled rich and earthy, and I ground them pretty fine to bring out the flavor.

It was a rainy morning and the mood was right, but this coffee just didn’t deliver. Despite its aroma, it lacked both body and flavor. It wasn’t burnt or bad….just not memorable. I’m hoping their Peruvian will be better, but if not, we’ll have to find another source. (Oh, how I miss Kickapoo.)