They had a delicious pork and garlic pate spread for the fresh bread in addition to butter and olive oil.

The uni mousse appetizer was also a standout.

We picked different main courses and my duck was delicious and the pork was not bad either.

And of course, being a French restaurant the desserts were great!  Check out the cute decorated grape.  We also had ice cream with dessert and a final macaroon.

The even brought out a little something to celebrate our anniversary.

The next one was Edogawa in another older section of Tokyo. They even had a Mount Fuji fireworks display that unfortunately we didn’t get a good view of. We arrived and there were tons of reserved blue tarps out which would fill up rather quickly.

Finally, our last fireworks show for the season was at Futako Tamgawa near where we play ultimate frisbee. Henry hung out with our friends and then met me to go to the special reserved section as one of the partners had invited us to join them in the special reserved section which was closer to the fireworks. The Tamagawa fireworks were amazing! So many huge displays and set to music as well.

Check out the size of the fireworks relative to the people at the bottom of the picture!

We definitely enjoyed fireworks season in Japan yet again.

Veggies and octopus appetizer

Fish and tomato dish (check out the tiny tomatoes!)

Henry’s favorite dish – the fish!

We also had yummy rice and kabocha (squash) miso soup and custard dessert with white wine gelee.  A great meal with great company.  Incidentally, that was the night Henry got his copy of StarCraft 2, too!  Just what he wanted for his birthday! ha ha!

We’ll probably post more pics later, since there’s so many beautiful ones, but here’s some funny ones.

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There’s tiny fishing boats and villages inside the bay.

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Even some boats with people crapping off the side of it.

Sadly, we did swim in the bay, but luckily in a much further place from this guy’s droppings.

We stayed in the  district in Hoàn Kiếm district in Hanoi.  Bun Cha is a Hanoi style vermicelli noodle (which is bun) with grilled pork.  This place was highly recommended by the people in the area.

Bún Chả Hàng Mành

This place is tiny with great food.  You can kinda worry about how they wash their veggies, like, if it’s clean, or if they’ll reuse what you didn’t eat.  But, we didn’t care.  This meal was about $7 USD and I had beer.

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these were spicy

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They had pork meatballs and grilled pork in very light fish sauce.  In North Vietnam, the fish sauce is pretty light.  Most of the food that you have in the US is southern style Viet food.  I think I prefer southern style.

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It came with fried egg rolls.  Awesome.

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The departure on the ferry had us floating under the Rainbow bridge.

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The ferry arrived at sunrise.

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To see the dolphins, we took another boat (40 min ride) to another island Mikurajima.  The island looks like the Napali coast in Kauai

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The dolphins have white noses.  They play by circling around each other.  The dolphin guides were great.  There’s no feeding or touching which is very eco-friendly.  The diving was simply just follow where the dolphins are and then jump in.  There were about 20 dive drops.  Pretty good for a 3.5 ~ 4 hour cruise.

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This dolphin looked right at me.  I could see the whites of it’s eyes.  I was aiming the camera at it for the shot before it got bored.  I could almost touch him.

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All boat names in Japan end with 丸 (maru).

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We had this katsuo (かつお) sashimi, slipjack tuna, for dinner.  It was katsuo fishing season, so this just came off the boat!  Definitely the best katsuo that we’ve had yet in Japan.

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Miyakejima has an active volcano on the island.  There was an eruption in 1980′s and the 2000′s.  In the 80′s the island had to be evacuated because of the lava flows.  We saw a few of these lava flows still on the island.  One flow was covering a school.  The other flows made some awesome rock formations on the coast.

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There’s sulfur gas from the active volcano.  So, it’s a little weird that it kills the trees that grow too tall.  It was a little eerie, but still very different.

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We ran into the local joke on the way back home.  We planned to take the plane back home, but due to the gas and wind direction, the plane usually only takes off 30% of the time.  So, we ended up taking ferry back to Tokyo.

After watching the sun set, we had some spicy crab (with lots of garlic) as well as some other seafood dishes in Causeway Bay.

The next day we went to Shek O beach to relax, had some roast pig and goose and then watched the Symphony of Lights in Hong Kong Harbor.

We went to the Temple Street Night Market to look around and get dinner.  Of course, we also took the Star Ferry once for the experience on our last day before catching a red eye flight back to Tokyo.  We had a great time in Hong Kong.

After our hike we sopped by the onsen and a waterfall before heading to Furano.

We had fresh corn for breakfast in Furano before heading to the Cheese Factory and then the flower fields.

We passed rolling hills of farmland as we traveled to the flower fields.

So much of the yummy food in Japan comes from Hokkaido.  Lavender scented the air as we walked through the flower fields.  Lots of colorful flowers and butterflies and bees.

We even saw them harvesting lavender.

Before we headed back to Tokyo we had some ramen at the airport.  All in all, a great summertime trip.