Japan Michelin tour 2023 day 3: another day, another park

Another morning, and another trip to C'est Très Bon for breakfast. We did not realize, though, that this bakery doesn't open till 10 a.m. Neither does Tully's Coffee. So we had to get Foursheets' caffeine fix at Starbucks... which is just as well since the coffee at C'est Très Bon is pretty crap.

While Foursheets had her croque monsieur, I decided to try the French dog (フレンチドッグ), with bechamel, mustard seeds and cheese. Pretty nice, but I think the croque monsieur is still better.

We ended up having a late lunch at the branch of Hakata Ikkousha (博多 一幸舎) inside Deitos at Hakata Station. This is, apparently, a famous ramen restaurant well-known for their creamy and foamy broth. For the sake of time, we wanted to eat at the station, so this was our choice today.

Chasiu noodles with egg (味玉チャーシューメン) - the noodles were 平打ち細麺 from Seimenya Keishi (製麺屋慶史), and unfortunately the kitchen didn't bother to thoroughly rinse the alkali off the noodles. While I normally am happy to pork bone broth noodles that are strong in flavor - which can sometimes manifest in what Foursheets calls "stinky feet smell" - the combination of this with the alkaline noodles results in something disagreeable.

The bite-sized gyoza (餃子) were OK.

We made our way out of the city on the Sonic (ソニック) train, changing train once on our way to Uminonakamichi Seaside Park (海の中道海浜公園). We had wanted to come here on our last trip, but kinda ran out of time for it.

The park is pretty big and we had limited time, so it made a lot of sense to rent a bike to get around. Because we got here so late, we didn't even get to use the full 3 hours allotted to us. But it was a beautiful, sunny day, and we made the best of it.

We headed first to the Animal Forest (動物の森), but arrived just a tad late and the time for petting animals was over. We wandered around the park and looked at the different areas where different animals were either enclosed in fences or in areas surrounded by moats.

The main attraction for Foursheets, though, was the little group of capybaras. They had retreated to the comfort of their metal enclosure by the time we met them, and were perfectly happy to nap together in a bunch. The door to the enclosure was open so they could have come out to greet us, but... nah... it was nap time.

Well, it WAS a good time to nap. The sun was providing warmth to anyone who wanted some, and there was the nice, occasional breeze to gently careless us. So no surprise, then, that we found this red kangaroo in this state...

There are large swathes of the park planted with flowers, and we tried to hit a few of them starting with the rose garden (バラ園). Unfortunately we couldn't spend too much time here as we had to return our bikes before the rental station closed.

In my excited on the first night of arrival, I bought 3 onigiri (おにぎり) from Lawson... but didn't have the stomach space to eat them before they passed their "best before" deadline - which was early evening yesterday. I had packed 2 of them in my bag today on the off chance that I was hungry, so I decided to open one up while waiting for the train to get back to town.

Salmon roe pickled in soy sauce (いくら醤油漬), from Lawson Onigiriya (おにぎり屋) - unfortunately this is now 2 days' old and the rice on the edges and corners have dried out. But once I reached the middle and the bottom, the marinated salmon roe was still decent and the rice grains weren't too bad.

While waiting for our late dinner back at the hotel, I decided to open up the other two onigiri and at least taste the fillings:

Grilled salmon (焼さけハラミ), from Lawson Onigiriya (おにぎり屋) - this was my least favorite out of the 3. Not very interesting.

Roast pork (チャーシューおにぎり), from Lawson Onigiriya (おにぎり屋) under the direction of Hakata Ramen ShinShin (博多らーめん ShinShin) - best out of the three. Thanks to the sauce and, of course, the fat of the pork belly, a good junk of the onigiri was still moist. Will get this again.