Tag Archives for angie batis
Sushi and Slappy Cakes. Oh Slappy Cakes, how I miss you.20. June 2013
Here are 2 more restaurants that we went to in Japan, one was a sushi bar that had some crazy looking pieces going around the conveyor belt. I tried a few things I had never had before, but I drew the line at the giant looking snail things, they looked a bit too weird.
We also went to such a cool restaurant called Slappy Cakes, which not only had the raddest name (we couldn’t stop saying it the whole time we were overseas) but it was also such a fun place to eat in. The tables had big rectangle hotplates in the middle that you could cook your own pancakes on, apparently you get these kind of places in America too. So what you do is order batter and then whatever ingredients you want in your pancakes, like bacon or choc chips or Nutella, you get the picture. I ordered lavender honey, whipped cream and homemade nutella and then I stuffed my pie-hole.
Smile, you’re in black and white in Japan.18. June 2013
We took my Olympus Pen E-P3 that I won a while back with us to Japan and Shane set it to a very grainy black and white effect which he decided to document the whole trip in. The photos are a bit sandy in texture and soft, but I really like how they came out. We took a bunch of photos and I decided to choose just a few for this post that I think sum up the general feeling of the trip.
I’m making a book similar to the Instagram one Shane made me for my birthday last year. It’s going to have all the photos we all took on our trip. I’m busy working on it now, you know i’m going to blog about it here and you will probably be sick of hearing about Japan by then, but just humour me (insert smiley face here). A thank you xxxxx
Father17. June 2013
I’m not sure if you are all aware of the fact that I have just opened up a new roastery in Braamfontein called Father with 3 of my friends, Barry, Nick and Chad. We have been planning this shop for the last few months and now it’s all ready and open and we’re so excited about it. It’s only 3 weeks old, but so far the feedback has been super good, which is really great.
The actual shop turned out exactly like I pictured it in my head, like a Scandinavian cabin in the woods and everything is just perfect, including the actual flavour of the coffee (and no, i’m not being biased). This project was awesome to work on, we all had our little parts, I designed the initial idea for the interior of the shop, Nick designed the logo, then we all came up with the idea for the wrappers, which feature our dads when they were young and then Nick and I designed them using the herringbone pattern featured in the shop. Chad is responsible for the taste of our coffee and Barry is the business brain behind it all. There were a few bumps along the way, but eventually everything came out just right.
We are situated on 73 Juta Street, Braamfontein, under the Neighbour Goods Market. I’m not there all the time but I’m in on Saturdays, so come past and say hi if you can, I would love to hear what you think of our new venture. We are roasting all our own beans there, so you can buy them ground or whole directly from us for your house, business, friend, loved one, mom, dad etc etc
Here are some photos of our place – thanks Andrew and Nick for taking them and thanks to everyone who has shown us so much love so far.
We had our cups made especially for the shop.
We ate. We saw.12. June 2013
We went to such cool restaurants in Japan, like this unassuming udon noodle place which was shown to us by a friend the boys had made over there. Chihiro said it was one of her most favourite restaurants to eat in and I totally understand why. At this place they make the udon noodles from scratch and they have a tempura selection that will have you hyperventilating from excitement. How it worked was, you ordered the basic dish at the front of the shop with the guy below, so it’s udon with broth and pork or beef or egg etc etc and then you head off to the tempura section and load your plate up with all sorts of wonderful things, squid, chicken, aloe root, potato, prawns, deep fried eggs, baby marrow (I’m mentioning like a 3rd of the selection). You then go find a place to sit and you sip on a beer or a coke while you slurp (slurping was big in this place) down probably the best bowl of udon noodles ever. We went back to this place 3 times, that’s how good it was.
This restaurant was also in Shinjuku, if you ever want to go I could always ask Chihiro for directions xx
After we ate ourselves pretty much into a coma, we left and headed towards one of the famous view points in town, that is situated right next door to the hotel Lost in Translation was filmed in. The lift catapults you up like 40 odd floors, you don’t feel how high or fast you’re gong but your ears do. You then leave the lift and are presented with the most awesome view of Tokyo, buildings for as far as your little eyes can see. It’s such a cool site, we went on an overcast day, but it didn’t ruin the view at all, just made the city look slightly ominous.
Japan you beautiful beast, I’m going to miss you.11. June 2013
Yes I’m back from amazing Japan, I have been there for the last 12 days so I’m super sorry for the lack of posts around these parts. But I’m back now and ready to show you guys some of the amazing places I went to.
I’m not sure how many of you have been there before, if you have gone then you will now what I mean when I say that Tokyo is truly one of the best cities I have ever visited and Japanese people are one of a kind in terms of how friendly and accommodating they are. I couldn’t believe how no matter what time of the day you went into a shop or restaurant (and things stay open late), everyone was always friendly and attentive. The city is clean and no matter who does what it always looks like they take their jobs and positions very seriously and complete them with the utmost pride.
If any of you are thinking about ever going to Japan on holiday, I say do it. It’s an amazing place to visit, see and experience and I would go back in a heartbeat.
I’m going to share some photos I took whilst there, I mostly used my iPhone camera so if some of them are a bit shaky, I’m apologising from now. I also downloaded an app whilst there called RoadMovies, where you take 1 second clips and it pieces them together for you to make a 24 second clip. So you can sum up day in 24 seconds, it’s a flipping cool app, but i’m going to try stitch a bunch of them together and make a mini-movie out of it. I’ll post it up when I’m done.
We based ourselves in Shinjuku (then went around to a bunch of other districts), an area that constantly has people in the streets. It’s crazy how many people and places there are to go out to, I think if you can imagine a place you would want to go to, they’ll have it. There are karaoke clubs and restaurants and dance clubs and shops and bakeries (amazing bakeries with amazing things to stuff your face with) and bars and themed restaurants, where you are served by robots or prison guards, ninjas or French maids and fancy shops and not so fancy shops and these crazy convenient stores that have everything you can imagine in them. I know that no matter how much I type I’m never going to be able to describe to you just how cool Tokyo really is, so please forgive me if this gets a bit long. I’m also going to do a few posts so I don’t have like 100 photos in 1 write-up.
I travelled there with Craig’s girlfriend Anna-Belle, who I really enjoyed hanging out with. She’s super fun and sweet and the 4 (we met Shane and Craig there) of us together really had a good time.
Look what I found at one of the duty-free shops at the airport in Doha, I nearly peed in my pants.
After travelling for what felt like 5 days (it seriously takes super long to get there). We arrived and then walked around this giant city for about an hour trying to find our hotel, not a lot of people speak english, so it was quite hard to figure out where to go, but eventually someone helped us and we got there. We decided, after having the world’s best shower to go out exploring and to find ourselves something to eat. We agreed from the start that having dinner at places like Mc Donald’s or Burger King was a huge no-no, we wanted to experience the awesomeness the city had to offer and not the franchised muck that is found in every corner of the world.
We ate at this tiny restuarant that we found down one of the many illuminated alleyways, it was narrow and authentic and we ordred a bunch of things off the menu simply by pointing at the photos. We seriously had some of the best food I have ever tasted that night. It was fresh and it made my mouth want to moonwalk across the table.
These pork dumplings, which we nicknamed ‘half-moons’ were crazy delicious, I think I’m going to get our dim-sum chef to try make them.
This place had crazy wallpaper in it which I really appreciated, especially the lady wearing the cat sweater.
Japan Japan here we come.26. May 2013
So the day has come and Annabel and I are off to the airport to catch our flight to Tokyo where we’re going to meet the boys. I’m super super excited but also a little nervous/scared about the flight, but luckily at this point i’m more excited than scared. I have packed my calming pills and I stayed up extra late last night so that I would be tired for the flight, not sure if it’s helped. Hee.
But anyway, I’m taking my computer with, I plan on blogging from Tokyo because I’m sure I’m going to see a butt load of awesome stuff, I’m just hoping our hotel has a good wifi connection. So I’m saying goodbye for the next couple of days while I travel and I will chat to you all sooooooon xx
If you would like to follow me on Instagram here is my handle miss_luckypony
