Matsugamine Church and Minmin Gyoza

Today is Sunday and we are very glad to be able to visit a church. Also today we celebrate Lola Soteng's birthday. She would have celebrated her 94th.

We had some light breakfast and planned to sample the Gyoza that is popular here in Utsunomiya. We then took the bus from Utsunomiya Station to a bus stop walking distance away from Matsugamine church.

This beautiful, Romanesque style church is probably the only one built with Oya-ishi (locally produced volcanic ash stone with green-greyish colour) in the world and designed by a Swiss architect Max Hinder (1887 - 1963) from Zurich. The church's website says this was his last work on churches in Japan before he returnedEurope.

My sister had a chat to the parish priest as he arrived whilst we were busy photographing the facade. He was grateful for our visit and was welcoming us all.

There was a bunch of Vietnamese people whom I thought were fellow tourists just hanging out inside the church. I was annoyed as they were talking loudly amongst themselves and I was trying to pray. Later on they started singing in their language and they had a wonderful harmonisation. I was humbled and I prayed for forgiveness.

Afterwards we tried to locate Miyajima street, also known as the Gyoza street. On our way there we passed by Orion Square -- an open mall with high skyline type ceilings similar to the one in Himeji. There was a band playing some ethnic music that was upbeat and they were using some windpipe and drums. We stopped to appreciate them along with a relaxed, Sunday morning crowd.

When we arrived at the gyoza street, immediately we saw the queue for Utsunomiya Minmin Honten. It is a 65 yr old establishment that has withstood the test of time. We joined the wait for takeout as the onsite dining queue was much longer. After being attended to, we looked for a spot to eat. It took us quite awhile to find an ideal location. We tried a nearby Omotesando Square mall but it did not have any public facility. Finally we gave up and we decided to sit by a small stream. We drove some menacing pigeons away, and excitedly, we finally tried the renowned gyoza. At first bite, we understood why they've have such a following. Their Gyoza is seasoned perfectly with an exquisite ratio between the meat and the wrapper (which had a nice bounce/resistance as it was perfectly grilled and was not greasy.)

After we've enjoyed our meal, we took the bus back to Utsunomiya Station and picked up our luggages from our accommodation in Richmond Hotel then headed back to the station. We then took a rapid service to Shinjuku station. We found ourselves needing to adjust our minds to the huge influx of people in Tokyo compared to the less populated areas we've enjoyed these past few days. JR Shinjuku station is a maze but we've managed to locate where the elevator lifts are to get to the Metro trains where we had to ride the Marunouchi line which will get us to Yotsuya-Sanchome station.

From there it was a bit of a walk to our AirBnB accommodation in Daikyocho called J Guest House, a minimalist, traditional Japanese futon style beddings.

We had an easy dinner as we were all very tired from lugging around our baggages, it was comprised of instantised corn soup along with Domino's Pizza (one was grilled chicken teriyaki and the other was salty pork galbi) along with some potato wedges and a few pieces of Japanese fried chicken and some 7-11 salad.

It didn't take us long to settle in and greeting each other "oyasumi nasai" (good night.) Czytaj więcej