18 hours in Narita, Japan

On my way home on JAL, I was transiting in Narita. It was already dark by the time I arrived at my hotel. So after freshening up a little bit I went to the nearby restaurant just across the street, spotted from the shuttle bus earlier. It was a noodle house. What a perfect meal to have in a cold and rainy night like that evening! But I went for a bowl of rice, vegetable stir fry and one hard boiled egg as they used pork for the broth. It was the lightest, simplest and tastiest stir fry I ever tried! 

This wasn't my first trip to Japan. I lived in Miyanoshita in Hakone for about 3 months in the early nineties. That was some time before I was really interested in food.  But I do remember after returning to Indonesia, I found myself often craving for sushi which was not available in the city where I lived at that time. I didn't even like fish before I came to Japan!  Fast forward, early in the morning after breakfast, I took a shuttle from the hotel to Keisei Narita Station. 
It was very cold in Narity City. I rushed to Doutor Coffee outside the station for a cup of hot chocolate and Japanese pastry and sat around to enjoy my morning. 

Then walked down to this cute Omote-Sando path

 to Narita-san Shinsyo-ji Temple (pictured below). 

From the temple, after exploring the side streets I went back to Omote-Santo path in hopes to find a restaurant that was already open so that I could enjoy unagi for (early) lunch. I loved unagi (eel) and heard that unagi is Narita City's speciality. So I had to try it. To my disappointment, the city was still pretty dead. 

Several restaurants were just getting ready to open their doors for their customers by the time I had to go back to the station to catch the shuttle back to my hotel. Sigh...

Saw this gentleman bake senbei (Japanese rice crackers) on my way to the station, so got some to snack on the plane and for my family in Jakarta.  

Glad to find onigiri at the hotel's convenience store. Grabbed a couple of those to munch on while waiting for hotel shuttle to take me back to the airport.