I hear they're famous for gyoza

Last weekend as Lauren and I each bid farewell to our guests, we decided to soften the blow of being all alone by hanging out with each other for the weekend. Lauren and I always have fun with one another and we generally like to play it by ear when it comes to our adventures. For this particular weekend we chose to go to Utsunomiya for their acclaimed gyoza. Now it seems that every single small town in Japan is "famous" for something and Utsunomiya just happens to be good at making fried dumplings. In addition to its gyoza fame, it is also the capital of the Tochigi prefecture just west of Ibaraki.

It is only about a 40 minute train ride from Koga, so it was a nice little day trip. When we first arrived we spoke to the very nice information lady who gave us maps and suggestions for the best gyoza and let us in on the little secret that Utsunomiya also has some pretty decent jazz clubs! We headed out of the station and to the most famous gyoza restaurant in all of Utsunomiya; it is called Minmin. We didn't want to stand in line for a seat, so we just quickly went up to the take-out window and got a dozen for $4. I think what makes this gyoza better than most other gyoza are the ingredients they use. I noticed that there is much less meat than in normal gyoza. There was a lot of cabbage and garlic stuffed into those little dumplings and I think less meat really does make all the difference.

After our gyoza we kept walking down the main street of town and ended up happening upon a street festival! As always, festival food is the best and naturally we each had our own choco-banana. As we walked through, the Japanese food vendors noticed that we were the only two non-Japanese people walking down the lane. It was exciting because everyone was speaking to us and giving us little samples of whatever they were selling. We tried some lamb meat, small raw prawns; we even bartered for our own Daruma dolls.

A Daruma doll is a Japanese wish doll that is mostly used around the New Year's holiday for making wishes and resolutions. As you can see from the picture, the doll comes with two white eyes. It is customary for the owner of the doll to paint in the left eye with black paint while thinking of a wish. The right eye should remain blank until the wish has come true. The most common color for a Daruma is red, but never losing our American touch, Lauren and I got green ones in an attempt to be different. While we were shopping around for the best doll, one of the ladies selling the Daruma came up to us and started speaking English. As we spoke back to her, she was so excited and thankful, that she offered to give us a discount on the price of our humble Daruma. She was a lot of fun and just kept saying in English, "I give you discount, it's our secret, yeah?" We laughed and bid her goodbye, and when Lauren and I got home that night, we made our wishes.

After the street fair, Lauren and I continued walking through the city searching for food and excitement. We happened upon a cute Indian restaurant that we later went back to for a scrumptious dinner. And just beyond that was a huge shopping mall. Being female, we walked in for just a minute, a tiny look around and came out having done some heavy window shopping and some Starbucks. That night we searched around for a decent (inexpensive) jazz club to patronize, however the music charges at each were rather steep. We ended up having a really great day even without the jazz music. We each decided that having guests can be sooooo much fun, but also crazy expensive, so we decided just to hold out until payday and then we can maybe hit up the club with the $20 cover!