champagne

Brunch at Peninsula Hotel: Dom and Pavlova

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Been a while since I’ve done a brunch review.
This was a celebratory brunch back in December of last year. It was a much needed celebration after a month of crappiness (think police, compensation and exams to boot). I got myself into a bit of pickle last year, but that’s another stay for a time when I have left the country. Best to retell that story once I’m out of Japan.

It was time to indulge and nothing says indulgence more than all-you-can-eat brunch AND all-you-can drink Dom Perignon!

The Peninsula Hotel’s Peter restaurant offers this brunch menu on Sundays only (so book in advance).

The brunch experience is unncessarily complicated, but the free flow champagne is definitely a bonus.
One of many glasses:

From Peninsula brunch

Let the brunch begin:

From Peninsula brunch

Salads and appetizers are buffet style. Easy. Knock yourself out.

From Peninsula brunch

In addition to that you can order a whole bunch of other dishes. All these dishes are all you can eat as well, but you need to order a la carte and each dish is literally a mouthful portion. So the waiting time is a little longer every time you want to order food. However, it also means that the table is full of tiny plates of bite-sized dishes:

From Peninsula brunch
From Peninsula brunch
From Peninsula brunch

The variety and quality is pretty good though, but it was rather slow service. This is definitely a slow leisurely brunch, so you better not make plans afterwards. This is a 2-3 hour eating ordeal.

The highlight here is the dessert buffet. They sell honest to goodness real Pavlova. Wow. Gobsmacked. It was damn delicious. It tasted like home. If you don’t know what pavlova is, in a word, it’s “divine”. A giant meringue nest topped with fresh fruit and cream.

From Peninsula brunch
From Peninsula brunch
From Peninsula brunch

Would totally go back there just for the pavlova.

Brunch here was very good, if not a little convoluted. Considering it’s the same deal as the Ritz Carlton, you’re better off going to the Ritz Carlton. (Just realised that I haven’t blogged about that…so I must get around to doing that. I have a huge backlog of blog posts to do! This thing called “work” is really cramping muh style.

Life’s a beach

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週末のために生きている。
I live for my weekends.

Spent an awesome day at the beach yesterday.
It’s not often I get to enjoy a lazy day at the beach.
My trips to the beach are usually to compete in open water swim races.
Was nice to finally do a lazy summer beach day.

Headed out all the way to Onjuku Beach – the far side of Chiba.
Totally worth the 30buks and 90min train ride to get there.

From Tokyo station, you can get the express train “Wakashio” and ride the train in air-conditioned, reclining seat comfort.
Note: the train departs from Platform 1 at Tokyo station. There are TWO platform 1’s as we discovered the hard way as we stood waiting at the wrong platform and had to sprint through Tokyo station, the whole 500m to the other platform 1 to make our train. We literally got on the right train on the right platform in the nick.of.time. *You will want the Keiyo line, platform 1 and not the Chuo line platform 1.

From Onjuku Beach

You know you’ve reached Onjuku beach when you see the camel statues:

From Onjuku Beach
From Onjuku Beach

Onjuku Beach is one of the best leisure beaches I’ve been to. Way better than the Shonan beaches. The water was beautiful and clean and clear. We parked ourselves on the sand for 5 hours enjoying the sun, surf and champagne (BYO champagne).

From Onjuku Beach
From Onjuku Beach

This is how you beach, in style:

From Onjuku Beach
From Onjuku Beach
From Onjuku Beach
From Onjuku Beach

We rented a beach umbrella for the day. The sales assistant not only carries the umbrella to your beach spot, but even digs a hole in the sand and sets up the umbrella for you. At the end of the day, you just leave the umbrella and they’ll pick it up at the end of the day. Bless, Japan. And the beach has beach shacks which sell food and more importantly, beer.

Beer, books, the beach. Bliss.

And just when you thought the day couldn’t get better, the day was topped off with an onsen. There’s an onsen right by the beach. The water was amazing. It was a dark brown colour (the colour of coke)…it was like a bathtub of coca cola. It made your skin feel amazing.

The day was so ridiculously awesome, that I plan on doing it all over again next Sunday (except maybe try and get to the beach even earlier!)

February Long Weekend: Yugawara Onsen

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Every weekend should be a long weekend. Makes the working week so much more bearable.
Last weekend was one such long weekend and a friend’s birthday so it was a perfect excuse for an onsen weekend with friends at Yugawara onsen (only 1.5 hours away from Tokyo).

This is how you ride the train in style – with champagne in hand:

From Yugawara onsen
From Yugawara onsen

We stayed at a really nice ryokan. I thought these silhouettes were cool.

From Yugawara onsen
From Yugawara onsen

Some gourmet food:

Sashimi and edible flowers:

From Yugawara onsen

Appetisers – had romanesca for the first time. Romanesca is basically the lovechild of broccoli and cauliflower.

From Yugawara onsen
From Yugawara onsen
From Yugawara onsen
From Yugawara onsen
From Yugawara onsen
From Yugawara onsen

Yugawara onsen:

From Yugawara onsen

It was a leisurely weekend of food, champagne and onsens. And we spent two nights there, which was rather indulgent of us. I have to make the most of long weekends this year (have very little annual leave up my sleeve).

Giant amao strawberries:

From Yugawara onsen
From Yugawara onsen
From Yugawara onsen