Went to Istanbul Turkish restaurant in Shinjuku 3-chome the other day.
Ate loads of hummus, dolmas, baba ghanoush, sesame pita, and baklava.
The interior was crowded with intricate tiles and ornate lamps and framed photos, and the waiter was hot.
Finished the whole thing off with thick strong Turkish coffee.
I really love not being bitten by mosquitoes, because, despite being blood type A and not O (I've been told that 'squitoes love O; yet another interesting blood-type related factoid), they just feast on me.
It's light and airy and they have a delicious vegetarian katsu set lunch with all the fixings.
Afterward, check out the sculptures at Nagisa Park, by the sea.
It's a great place for a nap in the grass, practicing yoga, or playing the flute, like an old auntie nearby was doing.
(this picture from their website)
It's near the beautiful suspension bridge (つり橋) and cliffs at Jogasaki.
Rental cottages and other similar DIY lodging like Happy Days can be found commercially, but are also available dirt cheap through most city governments. For example, Machida City (my city) owns several cabins in Nagano prefecture. Residents of the city get first dibs in renting them; neighboring cities get next call. They usually come with full kitchens and bedding and lovely natural surroundings; barbecuing tools are also often provided. This place, for example, charges 5,000 yen for a cabin that can hold up to five people. It's a really great way to go on a retreat to the boonies with a big group of friends; cook, drink, hike, hang out.
Being vegetarian in Japan is sometimes okay, especially when I'm home or in familiar territory where I can cook for myself and make my own decisions. 
But traveling can be reallllly hard. And hanging out with people who aren't used to my diet can be frustrating for all involved. So it's extremely nice and appreciated when people go out of their way to make sure I'm fed. My mood can go from fine to super sucky when I'm hungry for too long. Food problems take the fun out of everything. It's so great when it's a non-issue.
I was really happy to visit this beautiful mountaintop organic restaurant, Itsukushimiya. It was rustic and earnest and had a gorgeous organic kid running around, and cats, and a tree swing, and wood fired pizza with things like walnuts and mushrooms on top.
They have live music and do body work and talk about stuff like the local food movement. It's close to nothing, and I have no idea how they stay in business. They're only open from Friday to Sunday, and it's a 15 minute drive from Shimoda station, or probably a couple hour hike up the mountain. It was lovely and they served my pizza on some kind of huge leaf. I wrote it up at Happy Cow too. I hope some people go there. They're living the hippie dream.
I liked this grouchy fat guy.
Piles of tiles.
And one million soba restaurants, including this soba shack. Wait, shack is too grand a name for this structure. How about soba fort?
There was also a public foot bath, which is always cool. Gave my tootsies a good soak in the super hot hot water. Everyone else had little washcloths to dry off their feet. I'm such a bad J-resident. Though I own a million little washcloths, I only manage to be a proper hand-towel toting lady a small percentage of the time. This was not one of those times.
Have you ever wondered what a wasabi field looks like? I hadn't, but if you had asked me, I woulda kinda thought that it was a mountain-y, forest-y kind of plant. Which I guess it is, but I never thought it would grow in a marsh. Like this.
And expensive, damn. One plant, a root about the size of a fist, was going for about a thousand yen. I like me some wasabi, but at that price... maybe I'll stick with the stuff in the tube.
Oh, the hotel was beautiful. It was a creaky old ryokan-yado-ish thing, and it oozed antiquity. 
Built in 1907, Yasunari Kawabata stayed here, so it was fitting that we did too, as we were retracing part of the route of The Izu Dancer.
I loved the veranda and the single-paned glass and the ancient vanity and the garden. 
Plus it was quite reasonably priced. Oh yeah, and rotemburo. Recommended.
I also went to Hakone this weekend, albeit briefly, as a stopover on a weekend trip to Izu. I've been to Owakudani a few times before on previous trips to Hakone, and I don't care about hot-spring cooked black eggs, although the egg-ropeway is very cool. But I feel like a hobbit about to venture into Smaug's lair when smelling the sulfurous air and looking at the dark mountain with gas clouds in the foreground.
Something new this time was pampas grass (すすき).
I'd never heard of this place before, but it is apparently very popular, as this wide swath of gold was choked with people admiring the view.
It reminded me of the middle U.S.A., with its great endless fields of wheat and corn. Beautiful.
Sampling Eeyore's favorite snack.
This Greek restaurant was homey and wooden inside, and felt like being in the hull of a boat. There were lots of things for me to eat: I got Greek salad, fried eggplant with garlic potatoes, spanokopita, and baklava. Yay for tasty veg choices! I also took the opportunity to nerd out and talk about mythology: Hera and Zeus and Achilles and my ...eponym? What's the opposite of namesake?
This reminds me of this vending machine that was near my house when I was a kid, brightly colored soda pop in glass bottles, only ¥80 apiece. Vending machines are pretty cool, but with the whiz-bang pizazz that most machines have now, the older ones soon get shuffled off to the vending machine graveyard. Or probably they sell them to Malaysia and Thailand, which seems to be where JR trains go to retire.
Appetizing! (Click to enlarge, really, do.)
