Something new...

One of the things Josh and I look forward to, almost subconsciously, when we travel is discovering little aspects of the culture we're visiting in their food and drinks.

For those of you who don't know, I love tea. Hot or cold. With milk or with out. Always sweet.

When we were in Africa I fell in love with Five Roses Rooibos Tea. It's a red tea that is so different from your everyday black tea. They served it all day everyday, with milk and sugar, at the Third Wave conference. We would all grab a glass and sit and talk for hours with our new friends. I brought a big box home with me and savored every last bag, reliving the memories from that time.

The next year, when we visited Jordan and Israel, we found Lipton Yellow Label Tea. Everyone drank it all the time, with sugar and mint. We spent many evenings conversing with locals over freshly brewed tea, their sign of kindness and generosity. Again, we brought home our own stash to relive those moments through the flavor and aroma of the tea.

Here we are once again, we're on another adventure. This time in Japan. We haven't had the great conversations with locals or made lifelong friends on this trip like the last two and that's alright with us. This trip has been memorable in so many different ways. But we have yet to find that one thing that sticks out to us that we never want to loose. Tonight was our first reminder of that.

Coming from Saipan, I was so excited to experience "big world things": the shopping, the food, the hustle and bustle of a major metropolitan area. I miss the mental stimulation of living in a big city and I knew this would cure the cravings at least for the next few months. Before we left I was looking up all the different American companies that are in Osaka. Starbucks, McDonalds, 7-Eleven, Gap, Claire's, Baskin Robin's, the list goes on and on. I was so excited about being in my comfort zone again I was forgetting to embrace what makes this place unique.

Tonight, we ate at a place called Royal Host. In many ways it reminded us of Denny's or IHOP, diner style meals and service, but it was so unlike either of those places at the same time. The food options were not American, nor were they were not purely Asian either. It was a mix of both worlds, which is kind of what we were expecting. The best part about the whole experience was the drink bar. For about $2 you get unlimited drinks, not just the one drink you ordered, but anything from the bar.

The choices ranged from soda, iced tea or juice, to two dozen different options of hot tea, cappuccino, espresso, regular coffee or hot chocolate. It was amazing! We sat there for a couple of hours trying all the different drinks, watching the rain pour and the wind blow. We still don't have a tea from Japan to take home, at least not yet, but it was a priceless time together.