Ikebukuro Diary

One of our guests left cute balloon!
That character from anime 'Anpanman' and Anpanman is a hero among children.

Yoshikazu playing with Anpanman...he looks very very happy☆

Who goes this time??

This is Yoshihiro and he has gentle smile and attitude :)
I seeing he hold a penguin in this picture but I found he looks similar to penguin
somehow.....not so tall and the way his walks....
I guess.....maybe......he comes from 'Penguin Republic' :p

Name: Yoshihiro Kikugawa
Home Town: Shizuoka
Language:English, Japanese
Country traveled: Many countries in Asia, Europe, and South America
Favorite place in the trip : Hokkaido(Japan), China, Thailand
My home town is located in middle part of Japan, called "Shizuoka" prefecture.
It is one of the most beautiful cities in Japan and Mt. Fuji locates there.
The climate there is pretty moderate, and orange, Japanese tea, and sushi are the famouse food in the city.
Please taste food and have a good view in Shizuoka!

I have been interested in music and illustration since I was little.
I sometimes compose or arrange music and draw illustrations for my friends.

By the way, are you interested in Japanese food or Asian massage?
While traveling abroad, I cooked Japanese food for other travelers and learned
massage in Thailand.
I can tell you how to cook Japanese food and heal your tiredness, which comes
from your hard life.

I have been working in Hokkaido, Hakone, Kyoto and Osaka before.
I would be very happy if you ask me about those places in case you have plan
to visit there.

Needless to say, I like travel.
I love meeting new people and learning about new countries!

Well, ledies and gentlemen......!!
It is time to announce for 'Sakura Hotel Ikebukuro Award'!!
Most cutest guest of this month is..........!?

Congratulation and your smile make us happy☆☆☆

Hello?☆
Who likes to drink?
When we finished our job, we saw some of our guests chatting in our cafe. So we just joined them☆
Finally, it was some party with Japanese Sake.

Unfortunately, the terrace seat closes at 11:30pm, but , don't worry, you still can drink in the smoking seat or inside cafe till the morning.

Just as information, our cafe serves not only beer but also some "sake", wine and coocktail.
We have bottled sake in small bottles, so you can buy it as a souvenior to your country.
If you can't drink but your mate ask you to drink, don't worry, we have variety of fruit juce, soda, tea, coffee and so on.

Finally, Joel will start the exhibition at gallery HIRO in Roppongi.

I am sure that he will be a big artist in the future.
So let's go to see his works and get autograph☆

****
Joel Prejel ?image of Tokyo?
May 21st, 2009 to May 31st, 2009.
Gallery HIRO
F.W.E.A.P. building　1F , 5-1-27 Minami azabu Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0047

If you passed Ikebukuro station on the way to come to our hotel,
you might be aware that people make a long line for parchase something.
That is for a Rusk covered with white chocolate and named GOUTER de ROI.

Luckily, we got it from cleaning stuff.
Thank you very much Ms. Aihara!!

Congratulations☆,

Surprisingly, they have traveled Japan from south to north on their own bicycles
brought from Canada.
They started traveling from Fukuoka prefecture located south of Japan,
and they cycled across the bridge to Shikoku island and kept pedaling toward
Sendai prefecture located north of Japan.
They stopped also at some famous places like Nikko(it's a world heritage sight).
Finally, they have reached their goal and that was our hotel in Tokyo!!
I am really glad to meet you two and we are very glad your goal was our hotel ;).

Please have a good rest at our hotel before you go back home.

Let's track their road !
↓

Wow, Ninjya showed up in our hotel from Australia :D
Well, anybody knows about Ninjya???
Here, I found interesting link as below;
http://iganinja.jp/en/index.html

Maybe I want to be a Ninjya, because they are cool...they can running on surface and disappear with their peculiar technique...nobody recognize who I am.....
that's so cool....!!

Anyway look at his shoes,it's like a little bit Ninjya!
He got it because he really want to be??
This black shoes (?) is called Jika-Tabi known as footwear for workmen like construction workers, farmers and gardeners.
It just looks comfortable isn't it :)

Surprisingly, he has two pairs, so Yoshi has tried to be a Ninjya together!

Would you like to try it??
You can be a good Ninjya ;)

Let's dig in!!

One day Sariko told me that why don't we go to Izakaya(Japanese style bar)
because there is a nice Izakaya which serves really big roast fish
called 'HOKKE'.(sorry we can't find their English name)
It's one of popular dishes at Izakaya because of tasty.
I really like fish meals so I said 'why not☆'

On the menu, we can choose 'half size' or 'whole' and can you guess which we decided?
Of course...'whole.....why not!!'

Chef and staff were surprized and asked that we can eat all up surely??
We said just........'why not!'
And?.........................1 hour later....
↓↓↓
↓↓
↓

This is a 'HOKKE' by the way.
Thank you 'HOKKE' san, you are very tasty....;)

Finally, we have beautiful sky, and bliliant sunshine today.
hmmmmmmmmmm, how nice....
What I can not wait for this season is , having a beer after work at open air cafe. It makes me refresh and stress free.

Here is the my BEST 5.

No.5
Tsunami.(U.S Hawaii)☆
Most popular Hawaian beer. Sweet taste.

No.4 Haineken (Holland)☆☆
I guess most famous beer in the world.

No.3 The Premium Malts. (Japan!!)☆☆☆
Prize for the taste. My favorite one!

No.2 Becks (Germany)☆☆☆☆
Clear taste!　

No.1 Draft Beer☆☆☆☆☆
Available only at Restaurant or Izakaya. Served from Barrel.
Sorry this is my favorite one and it has not available at our Cafe yet....
So I will ask my manager to serve draft beer. Then we can drink Draft Beer at Sakura Cafe :D

We have many different kind of beer at our cafe.
All world beer is available at 450yen now.
Don't miss it☆

Yey!
We got chocolate from Agata san from Poland☆
They knew that we love chocolate because they read this blog
before come to Japan.
Thank you soooo much Agata san, very nice of you !!

Today, May 5th, is national holiday called 'children's day'.
Since long time ago, we set up the carp (koi)made of light cloth or made
with paper on the balcony.
We can see a lots of carps like swimming in the blue sky :)

I found this picture, Koinobori with Mt.Fuji on their behind, this is nice ;)

'Nobori (noboru as verb)' means 'go up'or 'ascend'
then, 'Koi nobori' describes 'The carps going up (stream)'.

Since antient times in China, there was a story 'carp become dragon when they
go up to the top of waterfall',
so people have set up 'koi' outside and wishing their children grow up healthy
seems like carps going up waterfall powerfully.....

This link should be make you unserstand what that means,
my explanation is not good enough :p
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodomo_no_Hi

This time, this person!

Masatoshi is very unique and we know he has been traveled all around the world
but nobody know how many languages he speaks...?
I do hope he write a book about his travels oneday...that should be interesting!!

Name: Masatoshi Abe
Home Town: Shikoku (The most beautiful island of the four principal ones in Japan
with splendid nature and warm-hearted people)
Language: various languages
Favorite food: anything green that grows from the ground and sweets
What I like most in Tokyo is 『Yoyogi Park』and 『Inogashira Park』
and I like 『Jackie Chan』 very much. I love the way he moves.
What I don’t like most in Tokyo is 『JR Saikyou line
(one of the busiest train lines in Tokyo) 』
Country traveled: All around the world
Travel episode:
On the morning of my first day in Tokyo I took a train to one of the busiest station, Shinjuku.
The train was so packed as I barely could breathe.
No sooner did the train arrive to my destination than its doors opened
And it was when I saw something astonishing happened.
Suddenly the people around me started stampeding out of the train
and I had to manage someone shoving me away from my back before I realized
what was going on.
All what I could was just walking with the flow of people without knowing where I was heading.
Since then this experience traumatically makes me be reluctant to go to
the station every single morning and evening as you can’t imagine.
But….some time has passed since then, now that I’ve been willingly living
in the town finding lots of exiting things.
I should have in mind that always good and bad things can be found everywhere in the world
and I already know that it’s better to focus on the positive side in order
to make our stay more pleasant.
Enjoy Tokyo!

This is Mark from Holland!

We have had short conversation when he checked in and
he told me that he going to Kiryu for planting, volunteer work.
He seemed so excite about what he going to do and showed me a big smile :)

Hi Mark, how you doing? genki desuka?
How is volunteer work?
I hope you doing fine and I do hope...you meeting a lots of nice people ;)