Favourite Japanese Dining Experiences in Edmonton

Japanese food is not just sushi.  Sushi made it famous worldwide, but there are all kinds of tasty Japanese food to eat.  Below, I've listed a number of tasty dishes at some of my favourite restaurants around Edmonton from breakfast to dinner.

First up is breakfast.  I actually don't know any Japanese places that serve Japanese breakfast in Edmonton, but I ran into a hybrid the other day at Tasty Tom's down on Whyte Avenue.  I ordered their breakfast snitzel which turned out to be a fried pork cutlet with panko breading.  So western breakfast of fried eggs meets a very well made Japanese tonkatsu.  The pan fried potatos were also done with curry powder giving it a bit of a Japanese flair.  This was a great meal that was quite filling.

Breakfast Snitzel.

Lunch and dinner options for Japanese food abound in the city.  I Love Sushi does sushi, but they're one of the only places that does a katsudon or oyakudon.  This is a real down to earth Japanese dish where you have the katsu cutlet or chunks of chicken in a cooked egg mixture with sauce on rice.  Quite tasty.

Katsudon

I've eaten at a number of ramen places in town.  Tokiwa Ramen is my current favourite.  Their long cooked tonkotsu broth is quite good, but their chicken shoyu broth (for their chuka soba) has more flavour according to my taste buds.  Their toppings and noodles are good, but their soup is great, so their bowls of ramen really take off.

Tonkotsu Ramen

The funnest place to have Japanese food is Dorinku.  I've been here for lunch and dinner and it is always a favourite as the food is great and the atmosphere is great.  The restaurant has lots of Japanese pop culture loaded into its decor from functioning vending machines, a toy figure collection on the way to the bathrooms, to food models.  They even show anime on the big screen.

Izakaya Lanterns out front.

Great display at the front.

Dorinku is full of tasty small dishes - like tapas, but Japanese pub style.  They do all kinds of sushi, but their cooked dishes are what really stand out for me.  They do Japanese curry, shaka shaka fries, karaage, stir fried udon noodles, seared tuna, sashimi salad, this really tasty beef rib, and more.  Everything goes great with a beer too!

A really tasty beef rib.

Another Japanese pub type restaurant is Izakaya Tomo.  This is another favourite place.  They have more of a variety of small dishes that are more izakaya-ish. Dishes like their daikon salad and kinpura (burdock root) are not very common.  They also do a really good takoyaki that isn't deep fried as far as I can tell.  I'm mainly eating their cooked dishes here like their Udon Aglio Olio E Peperoncino, gyoza, and karaage, but their sushi is good too.  Best of all, it all washes down with a beer.

Their cool looking upside down gyoza.

Finally, my favourite sushi place is Sushi Wasabi.  I've been eating here for a decade and their sushi doesn't disappoint. Nice large pieces of niguri sushi and good looking tamago.  The Japanese family who runs it used to even have a booth at the spring festival down at the Devonian Gardens.

Finally, coming in 2018 to Edmonton is Gyu-Kaku, a Japanese BBQ chain from Japan.  I've eaten several times down at their Calgary restaurant and they're expanding up here.  You grill all of your own meat at a table top grill in front of you and it is really tasty and again, it goes well with beer.

Some Japanese Snacks and Candy and More 2016

Just sharing some photos about Japanese snacks this time.  One of the great things about all things Japanese is the packaging is very pretty and well thought out, even if there is too much of it sometimes.  I do like the fact that their snacks are usually packaged in individual portions or in small batches inside the box most of the time so everything doesn't go stale if you don't polish it off in one sitting.

Not Japanese, but I thought this was cool with banana flavours for Minions.

These weren't Japanese either, but tic tacs that look like Minions is genius!

Strawberries are a very Japanese thing and Meltykiss chocolates are awesomely good.  They are the masters of the strawberry, even if it is an imported cultivar.  Strawberries are very important for Valentine's Day over there and they are delicious with intense and sweet berry flavour unlike what you get in the supermarket here.  Their strawberries are unique local varieties and are carefully grown and harvested.  They aren't cheap, but they taste great.

Japanese strawberries in the supermarket in Japan.  Some of those packages of berries are $14 for 8 deluxe berries.

Who doesn't like Pocky chocolate cream.  These midi sticks are shorter and thicker than the regular Pocky.

This Strawberry Pocky on chocolate biscuit sticks was really good.  They are like $5 a box here (a little more than double what they cost in Japan), but they are at your fingertips.

Veggie chips.

Different types of sweet cakes that go with tea.  You have red bean paste fillings and more.

All kinds of hard candies.  The one on the left has flavours from various Japanese sodas or juice.

More hard candies.  The Super Soda ones have a very tart coating on the outside.  The lemon type are super sour.

This a green tea hard candy that comes in five flavours.  Green tea soda, green tea and molasses, green tea and salt, green tea (matcha), and green tea and ponzu.  All very nice variants on just matcha flavour.

One of my favourite hard candies with ramune and fruit flavours.  Ramune is a Japanese lemon flavour that isn't lemon, it is ramune.  Unique and I haven't met anyone yet that doesn't like it.  I like how the bag is in the shape of a bottle of ramune soda which is where the flavouring first appeared.

More tasty chocolates filled with fruit cream.  I haven't seen these before here or in Japan.  Yummers.

You're probably off to the Asian supermarket after this.  You'll find tons of snacks at a supermarket like T & T.  Good luck!

BB-8, Lego, and Japanese Toys at Xmas Like Yokai Watch

Christmas is always one of those really busy times of year.  Since I have a big family we went out shopping for toys for the many children after taking a second mortgage out on the house.  Plenty of toys, but I was surprised that there weren't as many Star Wars toys out as I expected with the big movie release of Star Wars The Force Awakens.  There were lots of Star Wars toys, but I guess I expected twice as much or something as Disney is usually a marketing genius about tie-ins.

I'm always interesting in seeing what kinds of Japanese toys there are and saw plenty for Yokai Watch.  Yokai Watch is the new Pokemon in Japan and they were trying to launch it here with the new DS game which I own and have to play.  I'm going to play through Pokemon Conquest first (which is a cool cross-over with the Japanese strategy game Nobunaga's Ambition from KOEI).  Nobunaga's Ambition was one of the games for the original Gameboy that I played in the early days of portable gaming.

Anyhow, onto the list of some of the toys I saw.

 I I got one of those Iphone/Android remote controlled BB-8s as a present and it was a pretty neat little robot.  The controls work great and it rolls on the hardwood floor real good.  It has a number neat little mannerisms and such programmed in, but it is too bad that all sound and stuff comes from your phone and not the robot itself.  But the robot does light up a bit and the head bobs around on it pretty good (attached by magnets).

Yokai Watch figures wit the blind bags of plastic discs.  You collect these figure or discs to put on your special Yokai collecting watch to get their sound effects and such.  There are hundreds of the little discs so I'm not going any where near this collectible.

I caught a bit of an episode of Yokai Watch in my hotel room one morning in Tokyo.  Seemed like an interesting little show with the Yokai (spirits) talking, unlike Pokemon where the critters don't really talk.  In Yokai Watch, you catch spirits who then help you / become friends as you complete quests and such.

The legendary Yokai Watch itself.  This sucker was sold out in Japan last year and there were lineups to get them.  I don't think it is quite as popular here yet.

Jibanyan, the main yokai that helps out the protagonist.

I like how these yokai look here.  Very neat appearance.

We bought one of these.  Dr. Who Tardis Lego set with Daleks!

I can't believe there is a Big Bang Theory Lego set.

And yeah!!! Godzilla.  The biggest baddest import from Japan.  Not as cuddly as a yokai.

I like the Lego Dimensions computer game tie-ins.  Very cool.

More Dr. Who and K-9.  That is too cool.

These little World of Nintendo Dioramas are cool.  I have to play through Zelda Windwalker again one of these days.

And of course there were still Pokemon toys.  Mario too in the upper left corner.

Another Windwalker diorama section.  That boat was fun.

These Lego sets are expensive, but who doesn't like the Millenium Falcon.  I can't believe the original version of this set years ago was even more complex and goes for even more on eBay.

That's all for now.