Hyper Japan Christmas

Now, I have been wanting to go to Hyper Japan for ages due to my love of Anime and Japanese food. So finally, I took my butt down to the Tobacco dock to experience a snippet of Japanese culture. I went there with a good friend of mine who also shares my loves of Anime and Japanese food which we partook (if that's a word) in as soon as we landed.

The first dish we tried was chicken karaage which is similar to a chicken nugget but better (I first discover karaage from watching an Anime: Shokugeki (Food wars).

If you love food and anime this is a show to watch, I will write about it in more detail in a future blog post). Back to the karaage itself, the chicken is chopped into small bite sized pieces and fried in a light and crispy batter. We had them with some noodles and Chinese mayo. It was the perfect snack to start off the food experience we were embarking on.

My taste buds were full on anticipation for the next delight I was going to indulge in. We went to another stall which sold chicken katsu burgers and a variety of gyozas. Now we wanted to save as much space as possible so we opted for duck gyozas. They went down beautifully with some soy sauce, sriracha and chinese mayo. Fam just thinking about it is making me salivate. It was served piping hot and had sooo much flavour, exactly what we needed on the cold winter day.

After we had our "starters" LOL, we needed to wash the satisfaction down with what else: Bubble tea from Chai time.

Still wanting to appease my awakened taste buds, we went to the Sticky Bundit which specialised in Pan-Asian Rice burgers. The grilled chicken (which was from the thigh), the pickled ginger, shredded carrots, Chinese mayo and seaweed flakes went perfect with the rice buns which reminded me of the rice normally used in sushi (which I haven't had in years).

One of the main reasons I was excited to go to Japan was because it was the first time I was going to try authentic ramen . As a heads up, the "Ramen experience" is paid for separate to the ticket you purchase for Hyper Japan. The "Ramen experience" allows you to taste test each broth for the possible options. Of course, I was happy to do so. I was able to sample: Shoyu Ramen which uses soy sauce which was extremely umami in flavour, Sio Ramen which main flavour is made using salt, Miso Ramen which used pork broth and Tonkotsu which uses beef broth.

In the end I chose the Sio Ramen. All the Ramens tasted rich and full of umami flavour however it was the salty yet sweet chicken flavour of the Sio Ramen that really stood out for me. Sio Ramen is a very simple form of Ramen yet there was so much more to its essence as I said before, it was salty but there was a subtle sweetness that also came out as I joyfully devoured the Sio Ramen.

I really felt like one of the characters in Shokugeki: Food Wars ....if you know.....you know!!

Next on my Japanese food journey was obviously dessert. As a person with an extremely sweet tooth it was definitely inevitable. So, the first destination was Wheelcake Island, which served.. (you guessed it) wheelcakes. There was a small but tasty variety of fillings you could choose from. We chose to try, matcha green tea custard, custard and chocolate and custard.

Even now I still can't pick a favourite. It was my first time trying matcha green tea in a dessert. It obviously tasted like tea (more herbal) but also very florally as well. The chocolate wheelcake had a chocolatey hazelnut flavour but much better than Nutella and the custard tasted like ambrosia custard but also even better. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I wish I bought more to be honest.

Next, we took a trip to Wagashi Pan-Asian Dessert stall for a new, yet somewhat familiar treat: Dorayaki. Imagine two scotch pancakes sandwiched together with an exotic filling.. but better (yeah there is a lot of "but better" but........ that's the only way I could convey the tastiness).

I had to try the red bean Dorayaki with walnuts first, being that red bean has been an ingredient I have heard mentioned in the cooking programmes and Animes I have watched. I can't really explain the taste, I liked it but it confused me. I normally would have beans in rice (rice and peas) or refried when having Mexican food. Nevertheless, it was a memorable food experience. I will have a future post about my initial reaction to all the different flavours I purchased.

So I couldn't leave Hyper Japan without trying some Sake. Unfortunately the "Sake Experience" was sold out by the time we bought our tickets. Nonetheless, there was a lovely stall run by Ukiyo Republic that allowed you to taste three selections of Sake (sidenote: the flavour of Sake for some reason reminds me of rum like, Jamaican-style rum Wray's and Nephew in terms of how strong it was).

The finale to the Sake tasting was a sample of Plum wine

When I tell you, this wine.......was yummy hunty!!!!!! LOL. It was sweet and very strong.It would be a great gift for Christmas and birthday. I obviously had to get a larger portion (not as large as I wanted but I had already gone pass my budget so it had to do).

Overall, I had a brilliant time at Hyper Japan Christmas. I was really surprised on how welcoming the environment was especially the vendors. They were friendly and really talented at their respective crafts: I will definitely be reaching in the Summertime. If you are looking to experience Japanese food, collect some anime, manga, even replica swords of your favourite anime characters or anything related to Japanese culture you need to check out Hyper Japan in the summer and this time next year, TRUST ME.