Meals on the way to Aichi, remembered across three visits
The food started before Haruru reached the lunch table in Aichi. On one trip it was a substantial breakfast at Okazaki PA; on another, a train bento she could not resist. These memories come from three different visits.
From haruru.1002’s accounts shared in 2018, 2019 and 2024, edited with permission.
Breakfast at Okazaki PA in 2024
On the trip described in August 2024, breakfast was at Okazaki PA. Haruru had Tora no Pan bread, three kinds of onigirazu, and Maruten fish cakes and sweet-and-savoury simmered octopus.
The octopus was especially memorable. She liked it enough to think about buying octopus and trying to simmer it herself another time. The photograph shows the pieces in their sauce, still in the takeaway container.
Beef hitsumabushi for the first lunch in Aichi
For the first lunch in Aichi on that trip, her daughter recommended a restaurant serving domestic-beef hitsumabushi. Haruru began by eating it as it came, then added condiments, garlic and wasabi, and finished with the remaining rice as ochazuke.
She enjoyed the meal. The photographs show the sliced beef over rice, a small dish of wasabi and, later in the same record, three small desserts on a long white plate. Lunch left her wondering what they might have for dinner.
A Kiyoken bento on the train in 2019
A separate account from November 2019 starts with a Kodama journey to Aichi. Haruru did not usually eat breakfast, but the choice of station bentos tempted her into buying one, along with some snacks.
She chose Kiyoken, then wondered whether she should have tried something less familiar. The autumn-patterned wrapping in her photograph reads おべんとう秋, and the opened box shows rice and a selection of small side dishes.
A recommended sukiyaki lunch on an earlier visit
Another visit, described in November 2018, was a short trip to Aichi after work, with the return planned for the next day. Lunch was a recommended sukiyaki meal that Haruru enjoyed.
The photographs move from slices of beef laid over the pot to cooked meat in a bowl of egg. It is a meal from that earlier visit, alongside the later train bento and beef hitsumabushi in these memories.
Sources for this account
Haruru’s accounts shared on 9 August 2024, 2 November 2019 and 10 November 2018 describe separate visits. The 2024 account names Okazaki PA, Tora no Pan and Maruten before the beef hitsumabushi lunch. The 2019 train photograph identifies Kiyoken’s おべんとう秋 wrapper, while the 2018 account describes the sukiyaki lunch. Plans for dinner or the following day remain plans.