Namjatown! Gastronomic adventures in Tokyo...

Namjatown is a theme park (in Ikebukuro) featuring gyozas (or what is called guo tie in Chinese), cream puffs and ice-cream! Actually, they are physically arranged into 3 clusters. There are food stalls, rides, performances, etc. There are 2 types of entry fees: 300 yen just to enter and eat (have to pay extra for food items and rides) or 2,000+ yen for entry and unlimited rides (but still have to pay for food). My friend Con-chan and I paid just to enter and eat.

We headed off to the gyoza section immediately for lunch! This is the entrance...

The interior is designed to resemble a night market with street stalls featuring gyozas from different parts of Japan.

After looking around and sampling gyozas from Tokyo and Osaka, we realised that the gyozas basically taste the same, but the difference lies in the sauce.

This is the entrance to the cream puff (also called shu cream) area...we walked through it but, didn't buy anything. Lots of very sinful-looking cream puffs - some small, some big (as big as hotdogs!), in all sorts of flavours (custard, chocolate, etc). But they're not cheap. Each puff is sold for at least 300 yen (S$4.50) And then, the section I was waiting to go to the whole time...ICE-CREAM!! There were stalls selling all kinds of ice-cream...ice-cream in crepes, soft ice-cream, sundaes, etc. No ice-cream in bread though! Maybe I should go open a stall selling that!! ;P Again, ice-cream was not cheap...expect to pay at least 500 yen (S$7.50) for a cone.

There's this shop in the ice-cream theme park called ice-cream museum that stocks at least 10 fridges of ice-creams in all kinds of crazy flavours, e.g. octopus, squid, all kinds of different fish flavours, curry, eggplant, hokkaido salt...yes, these are all ice-cream flavours...weird right?!

So since this place stocked all these weird flavours, I couldn't possibly just buy a flavour that I can easily get outside right? So I decided to try the octopus flavour. It tasted a bit weird...with very chewy bits in it...hmm...at least I can say that I've tried octopus ice-cream...good thing is I don't like it so much that I'd have to pay money to enter the theme park just to get that flavour!

Talking about eating weird stuff, I also got tricked by my friend in Tokyo, Iris, into eating beef tongue! We were at this yakiniku (meat that you grill yourself over a hot plate) restaurant specialising in beef and she ordered some dishes to share. The first plate arrived and it was just flat, circular slices of beef, so she grilled it and placed it on my plate. After biting into it (or attempting to, because it is impossible to bite it), I asked her what it was and she cheekily told me beef tongue. Well, yes, it tasted good because of the marinade but it was very chewy and thinking that its tongue when you're chewing it can make you want to gag! Bleah!!