Yamamori: the best Japanese food in Dublin

Happy Thursday! You’re nearly finished this week! How are you doing? Are you taking time to check-in with yourself and give yourself the care, love, and attention you need? If not, it’s perfectly okay to set aside time for yourself to do whatever you want/need to do during ‘me time.’ Maybe your thing is yoga, meditation, running, reading, tending to a pallet garden you built, sewing some pillowcases for your home decor, making a dress to match your homemade mask, paddle boarding, refurbishing furniture, tooling around with some new tools, or even playing animal crossing with family and friends, but whatever you want to do during your assigned ‘me time,’ make sure you’re doing it and giving yourself a break.

If you didn’t get a chance to read yesterday’s post - “youtube, a chalk horse, and stonehenge” - you can click here to read about how I spent my 30th birthday weekend in England last year, watching youtube and soccer and seeing several UNESCO World Heritage Sites with my friends from Villanova! Otherwise, if you’re all caught up on England and the preceding mini-Eurotrip I did with my boyfriend, buckle up and let’s head back to Dublin! (links to all previous blog posts at bottom of page)

My return to Dublin after the Eurotrip was bittersweet as it was my final week living in Rathmines. Alongside packing up my flat to fly back to the States, I also made a point of trying to squeeze in quality time with my friends who were still around. One highlight was a dinner I had with one of my closest friends from my Masters program, Yasmin. We made plans to meet at Yamamori on George St. in order to celebrated my belated birthday and talk about my Eurotrip. It was a perfect few hours with a very good friend. We talked about our year, our classes and dissertation processes, rejoiced in our researching and writing being over (for the time being), and celebrated a beautiful friendship. Yasmin gave me my first set of my very own Dungeons and Dragons dice since we had spent many hours in her kitchen, fighting evil beings and breaking into raps (and, obviously, eating delicious snacks).

The food at Yamamori was so delicious. It’s close to the top of Yasmin’s Dublin restaurants list, and it’s close to the top of mine now, as well. I still dream of the enchiladas verde at Azteca, though. When we picked a place to eat, I also took the recommendation of my boyfriend’s sister and brother-in-law since they also swore by the food at Yamamori. I know there was a fancy type of Ramen on special that night, which is what I ended up getting, alongside a Philadelphia roll (you can take the girl out of Philly…), while Yas got (what I believe was) a Bento box. The food was out of this wold and provided such warmth and comfort to a bittersweet ‘see you later’ dinner.

Have you ever noticed the effect that food can have on a situation? Farewell dinners are never easy, but having warm, inviting Japanese food provided an additional level of comfort that helped the dinner truly feel like a ‘goodbye for now’ instead of just a ‘goodbye.’ If you’ve had a similar experience, please let me know! Subscribe in the e-mail submission box below and reach out, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and reach out to me on the “contact” page. I’m so happy you're here and that I’ve been receiving a lot of really incredible stories, questions, and feedback from a community all over the globe! Other people’s stories that I’ve gotten to read via e-mail, text, tweet, DM, etc. recently bring me such smiles, and I am so grateful for all of it! I hope I get to hear all about whatever stories you’ve been thinking about as we’ve been on this virtual journey together! Also, I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you have any restaurants/eateries/pubs/coffee shops/ice cream joints/theatres/lookout spots you would recommend in other countries or even in your current home town or city, I'm absolutely 100% all ears!! I couldn’t do this without you! So THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, truly, thank you.

Sincerely,

Johny

P.S. - If you want to catch up from the beginning on this series of travel adventures, here's a cheat sheet to the posts (in order in which they were published):