Previously: Time flew fast as we kept on taking pictures and talking. At around 7.50 am, we were to board the plane.See you in five days, San Jose!
The plane was smaller than I thought (possibly the smallest plane I've ever gotten myself onto) that even we had to put our hand carried luggages to the baggage. Good thing we weren't charged for that. I was practically sweating along the way since the cabin didn't turn on the AC. I was even woken up from my nap by the excessive heat. Luckily, we arrived at Los Angeles soon, at 9.30 am.
LA wasn't as cold as San Jose when we got there. It was relatively warm but the wind really killed us. The shuttle finally came to pick us up to our hotel.
Aside of us as the passengers, there were also three other passengers engaged in a warm, lively conversation. Elda attempted to join the conversation and finally made it, meanwhile, Aymee and I decided to continue our 2-hour sleep inside the shuttle.
Finally, we arrived at our hotel, Kyoto Grand Hotel and Gardens at around 11-ish. It was located at the Little Tokyo/Arts district, a district in downtown LA inhabited by mostly Japanese Americans. You can tell how ecstatic my Japanophile* friends are, particularly Elda.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to check in until 3.00 pm. So practically we had plenty of time before checking in. With the help of Yelp application installed in Aymee and Elda's phones, we decided to have lunch at Suehiro. Aymee helped herself with bowl of don, meanwhile Elda and I had udon. It was considered a simple lunch since we were purposedly saving ourselves for our shabu-shabu dinner later in the evening.
We were strolling a bit in Japanese village plaza. Elda got herself a Japanese style small lamp and Aymee bought a Totoro tee. Personally I think it's a hilarious shirt, with only Totoro's famed grin. I was thinking to get myself one but apparently I was too small even for the smallest size.
Little Tokyo is basically filled with shops that sell Japanese stuff, not just any stuff, but stuff like anime, manga, and cute accessories. Our faces literally lit up when we stumbled upon an anime/manga shop that doesn't only sell manga, anime DVD, action figures, but also J-drama DVD.
At one point, Elda was even torn whether buying a Fruit Basket manga or not, but in the end, she decided not to buy it since she already bought a Fruit Basket artbook just the day before.
At around 2.30pm, we decided to return to the hotel. We knew it was still half an hour early from our check-in time, but then Elda suggested that we took a look at the hotel's Japanese garden. I don't know if the Japanese garden the hotel has is famous or not, but the receptionist seemed to brag about it.
It is actually a beautiful garden, but too bad it doesn't really impress me much. It has a strong Japanese vibe in it, but somehow it lacks of decoration to make it look/feel more Japanese. But anyway, it's still a nice garden. I enjoyed the view. If it hadn't been a nice garden, we wouldn't have taken bunch of pictures there.
And we even took more pictures in the lobby. Narcissism alert! You have been warned.
We're quite immune to people's attention. So we don't really care if people around us would be weirded out seeing our act.
Three girls waiting for a talent agency to hire them kekeke
Looks like Elda's doing something suspicious there
The lamps in the lobby. Fascinating right?
Posing a la Totoro using Aymee's Totoro tee
Finally, we checked in and went straight to our hotel room: 926. It was a decent room of two queen beds. At last, after not being able to rest our feet for the past nine hours (yes, no kidding), we literally slumped ourselves on the bed and took a momentarily nap, while also watching a random show on TV.
There was no way for us to go to Downtown LA that late afternoon, since Aymee told us that the queue for Shabu-shabu we aimed to have for dinner would start at around 5.00 pm. I must admit the Shabu-shabu House, the restaurant that I'm talking about is quite famed. Aymee's friends had recommended us to try it, and so were my friends who resided in LA. They said. “It's a must-try food in LA's Little Tokyo.”
With the determination to get the taste of LA's best Shabu-shabu, we took off from our hotel at 4.30 pm. The restaurant itself was located in the center of Japanese Village Plaza.
Apparently it wasn't easy for us to just go in and find our seats. An oji-san asked all costumers to jot down their names, their preferred Shabu-shabu size, and number of party on the waitlist. We signed up under Aymee's name.
At first, I was okay by waiting for the people to come in, have their Shabu-shabu, and exit once they finished it, because I wasn't really hungry. But since we were to wait inside the small restaurant, it gradually became a torture.
The smell of the chicken broth, combined with cabbages, tofu, noodle, meatball, mushroom, and slice beef tantalized our nostrils. The sound of the boiling soup filled our ears. Elda, Aymee, and I decided to distract ourselves from the temptation by talking to each other. It actually helped!
Finally, Aymee's name was summoned and we quickly took our positions. It turns out that it wasn't a normal Shabu-shabu dining I had always had before back in Jakarta (yeah, this Shabu-shabu I had in LA was the first one I ever had in the US). The one that I always had in Jakarta was a shared one, due to its relative big portion.
In Shabu-shabu House, each costumer was to eat up their own portion of Shabu-shabu. The pot sizes were all the same, but the portion size was determined by the number of beef served. For small portion, the served beef was half the plate.
Sorry, not picture, we were too busy munching all the beef, veggies, and broth. Food is always on top of everything, eh?
Once the dinner was over, we strolled a bit again before going back to the hotel. Tomorrow was gonna be a looong day as we were going to visit one of the coolest places in LA...Universal Studios!!!!
Before we headed to our hotel, we went to Marukai Market to buy a galon of water for our days ahead. Also, we dropped by Mitsuru cafe to grab Imagawayaki and Shrimp Balls for night snack and breakfast.
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*A Japanophile is not an otaku. It's basically a term for people who harbor strong interest in Japanese culture and Japanese stuff :) So it's not a negative term.
ohhhh.. so I'm NOT an otaku then. Pheww that helps!
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