Boulangerie Asanoya in Ikebukuro Station

So where to eat if you are in Japan and you don't want to spend a lot of money? Hopefully your local konbini will have a decent selection of fruit, salads and more. I was lucky in that the FamilyMart by my second hotel was just that. So I enjoyed a number of salads and the like for most of my meals. But it is hard to pass up on Japanese pastry. I also tried a couple shops in Ikebukuro Station and my favorite was Boulangerie Asanoya. 

Besides having nice staff, Asanoya also had a lot of temptations. I tried to be reasonable since some were for dinner. Like this cheese bread. 

Or how about pizza bread. 

While this might look like a curry bun. 

It's actually Asanoya's tomato cheese donut. I don't usually post photos of torn apart food, but I had to show the little tomato hiding in there. 

Egg sandwich for lunch one day. The nice big piece of tomato, cucumbers and generous lettuce was good. Often Japanese sandwiches aren't so produce forward.

Since it was sakura season, many places had sakura specials. This sakura bagel wasn't my favorite. That's a salted sakura blossom on top. I've had sakura blossoms before but this time it was too salty all in one place on the bagel. 

What I did like, and I'm sorry I don't have a better photo of it, is their blueberry bagels. I love blueberries and this had a nice amount of them in it. The bagel wasn't heavy like some can be, but was nicely soft.

The other item I ended up getting more of was their little pies. Apple and blueberry, they are very small, maybe a couple inches across. Maybe five centimeters? Next time I will do a size comparison photo. What was nice is they are not overly sweet and the fruit inside is dry, more of a crumble mixture. Apple pie in Japan is not the same as American apple pie. These little ones were good and I liked this size with tea. One was just right. 

And of course I tried the curry donut. Not bad.

Boulangerie Asanoya has been baking in Japan for 85 years. I hope they will be around a lot longer than that because I enjoyed their baked goods. They have a number of locations in Japan, listed here on their webpage (which is in Japanese) http://www.b-asanoya.com/#page5. One thing, in Ikebukuro there is a soba shop also called Asanoya, so if you ever are in that area, they are two different places.

Ikebukuro Eats

Since I mentioned eating at Ikebukuro Station in my last post, here's a few more things I tried while in Ikebukuro. First is a little cream puff chick that FamilyMART offered for Easter. It was actually pretty good.

Believe it or not, I've never eaten Japanese pudding. They don't sell it in the US. Given it's iconic status as an anime and manga staple, I'd thought about trying it for a few years now. 

So I finally did eat a Glico pudding. It was okay. But not something I'd eat often. Made me wishful for crème brûlée.

Something they do sell in America is Beard Papa's. The smell of freshly baked cream puffs permeated this part of Ikebukuro Station so I had to stop at least one time.  

Sorry my photos are not that great. Fun of trying to take them in a little Tokyo hotel room with not much light. But the packaging is cute. 

I ended up choosing the special which was cookies and cream. And it was good! 

I stopped at Vie en France bakery one evening. When I lived in Arcadia, California, I worked near a mall so would stop in at Vie en France for lunch occasionally. They didn't have pizza there. This was not bad for a non-pizzeria place.

Chocolate chip pastry from Vie en France. Since I didn't take up the breakfast option at the hotel. 

Another Ikebukuro Station bakery I checked out was Andersens. I've eaten pastry from them before. This was an orange pastry. Another nice choice for breakfast.

My next post will either be the bakery I went to more than the others, or a new area in Tokyo that I visited. I haven't decided yet.

Calbee Chip Crunch Time

 So one of the fun things I did while in Japan was eating different limited Calbee potato chips. Calbee is known for creating all kinds of variations. I thought I would only find a couple varieties at the local konbini. Little did I know... So one of the first kinds I saw was this Mentaiko Pizza, 明太子ピザ. That's right, cod roe pizza chips.

I wasn't sure what to expect. Though might be really salty. Well no large chunks of mentaiko on the chips. These weren't too bad and were not too salty. Can't say I would have bought more though.

So if I could try those why not also attempt the pepperoni pizza chips.

Bigger bits of cheese on this. Definitely had a pepperoni pizza flavor. Which was a little overwhelming for their light chips.

Also with the pizza chips I'm guessing you could get pizza chip socks, ties and underwear. And who hasn't wanted to curl up in a pizza chip pillow?

Not sure if this guy is suppose to be Italian or a blond version of John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever.

Timing for this chicken wings was pretty funny. A friend online was asking why did she buy frozen buffalo wings (chicken wings). Seems they were pretty bad.

Calbee's take on chicken wings fared better.

This was an odd combination. Cheese and Edamame. 

I couldn't taste much edamame flavor. Mostly what was like a white mild cheddar. 

Something different. Calbee Takumi Ebisen from the Tau Hiroshima store.

Each chip individually packaged. Definitely an omiyage gift thing.

How they appear inside. Something special for shrimp chip lovers.

I knew I might regret this purchase. Because it was mega garlic. You have to really love garlic to enjoy these. Garlic to the point of being spicy hot. Good thing I wasn't going anywhere after these.

And my favorite. Not sure what all is on these but I know there is anchovies and garlic. Much more subdued than the mega garlic chips. Really good and I wish stores outside of Japan carried these.

I've said before I rarely eat potato chips but Calbee is the exception. Usually I try a bag or two while in Japan but this time I seemed to luck out with the different flavors. Right after this they announced they had to cut back on some of their different chips. So it was fun to try some while they were available.