Another favorite restaurant of mine in Brunswick, Georgia is Kyoto Express. It carries on the tradition of Kyoto Restaurant (lovingly called Kyoto’s) that used to be the go-to celebration hibachi restaurant on St. Simon’s Island, which featured large hibachi grills you sat around, twirling knives, explosive fire cooking, and good times. After Kyoto Restaurant closed, one of the chefs opened Joe’s Japanese next to Glynn Place Mall, which recreated the Kyoto Restaurant experience without the same kind of atmosphere as the original. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long, but thankfully, Kyoto Express opened as a quick alternative without the show and atmosphere but with the same good food. It is located in the Publix shopping center next to the Super Wal-Mart.
I went there several times during my last trip to Brunswick. My go-to meal is the teriyaki chicken and hibachi shrimp dinner (above). I also like the teriyaki chicken and hibachi steak combo dinner (below). If I’m real hungry, I’ll add on a side of extra veggies (stir-fried zucchini, onions, and sesame seeds).
There are two key elements that keep me coming back to Kyoto Express besides the overall quality of the food. The first is the way that they make stir-fried rice. It’s simple. They begin with oil on the grill. Then dump the rice. After working it a little, they add a lot of butter while working it over the grill’s surface and then toss in some soy sauce for flavor and color. The second element are the sauces. While most folks tend to like the “white sauce,” I don’t. I only use two sauces: mustard sauce (a concoction I’m guessing of thick mustard and soy sauce) and ginger sauce (both seen below). I use the ginger sauce for shrimp and steak. I put mustard sauce on everything else–chicken, veggies, and rice.
A family favorite meal when I was young was a box of french fries from Grandy’s and a thin-crust pizza from Pizza Inn. When I make my way back to Brunswick, I try to get this combination at least once. However, this past trip I went four times during my two week trip! Since my parents live about 30 miles from Brunswick now, my dad and I would eat our pizzas and fries in the car–sometimes in the Marshes of Glynn Overlook Park and sometimes in the back of the Pizza Inn parking lot. Nowadays, my dad prefers a double helping of hamburger on a pan pizza, and I get a handful of different toppings (hamburger, pepperoni, black olives, spinach, mushrooms, and onions) on my thin-crust pie. If you find yourself in Brunswick, both restaurants are recommended!
When I was visiting my folks a few weeks ago, one of our first stops was to Tait Feed and Seed in downtown Brunswick, Georgia. We needed to get three new blades for my dad’s 61″ cut Skag Tiger Cat II mower. We changed the blades and cut the grass twice while I was there. Even with such a wide cut, it takes about an hour and a half to cut the yard around their house, metal building, and the driveway from the gate, along the field, and to the house.
Besides the giant rat shown above, two other things caught my attention in the shop while we were there. First, they have an antique hand-crank phone stationed above their modern AT&T phone. Second, the Master Price List Replacement Parts catalog for Kut-Kwick mowers, which are designed and manufactured in Brunswick, reminded me of the first riding brush mower that I learned to use at Ellis Auto Parts on 341 Highway. I don’t know the year model, but the one I used many times was an updated version of this one from the 1960s.
Ellis Auto Parts, my family’s business that closed down in 1996 when my parents retired, used to carry Dorman Products, a line of automotive hardware such as bolts, nuts, washers, pins, caps, and a variety of other kinds of parts. While my dad sold a lot of our remaining stock when he closed the store, he kept a lot of unsold product and the metal drawers that we kept the stock in. When I was at home, I stacked up more of these drawers to create a grid against one wall. The full grid is 5 x 5, but I took a photo of 4 x 4 because one of the corner bins was missing a drawer that I couldn’t find–it is likely somewhere in the shop but waits to be rediscovered. I’m glad that we had access to all of these parts during my trip this time, because we made use of them in our many projects.
After visiting my folks for a couple of weeks in Georgia, I rented a car from Enterprise to drive back home to Brooklyn, because I wanted to load up on bulk-buy and shelf-stable grocery items that are difficult and/or expensive to purchase locally without a car.
I had reserved a Toyota Corolla or similarly sized midsize car, but none were available when I arrived at the Savannah-Hilton Head Airport location. They upgraded me to the 2025 Toyota Camry shown above. It has a hybrid gas-electric drivetrain with an estimated 51 MPG fuel efficiency.
This post reports on my experience with the Camry’s fuel economy over a long drive.
My four-day trip route was from Savannah to Atlanta where I would spend a day, then drive to Delaware, and finally arrive in Brooklyn where I would return the car to the Park Slope Enterprise location. Going from point-to-point, the drive took about 16 hours 59 minutes over 1,113 miles. But, I did a lot of city driving in Atlanta over one day. I estimate that I drove an extra 50 miles for a total of 1,163 miles.
When I picked up the car, I already had about 100 pounds of grocery items that I loaded into the trunk and backseat. While in Atlanta, I added another 20 pounds of items to the car’s overall load. This is combined with my weight and the weight of fuel.
The Camry has three different driving “modes.” I set the mode to “Eco” as opposed to “Normal” or “Sport.” I adhered to the speed limit and avoided using high-RPM, passing gear driving except in a couple of situations.
Over the entire trip, I purchased about 25 gallons of gas (returning the fuel level in the car to the same level that I received it), which yields a combined 46.52 MPG efficiency. Considering the awful traffic conditions in Atlanta (congestion, stop-and-go driving, low speed, etc.) and its fuel use, I suspect that my highway driving is much close to the estimated 51 MPG fuel economy.
I was happy about the fuel economy of the Camry on this trip–it reduced its pollution footprint and it saved me some money. It is impressive how a larger vehicle achieves better fuel economy than the best gas mileage of my old gas-powered Corolla.
Driving the Camry was comfortable for the most part. This was the first car that I drove with a fob/start button combination. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to disable the lane following feature of its cruise control, which I was fighting against (making me think there was something wrong with the steering before disabling this feature). The seat material–I think faux leather–wasn’t breathable, which made it uncomfortable for sitting against over long periods of time.
One big complaint that I have about the car that has nothing to do with fuel efficiency is Toyota’s radio accessed via its in-car screen. It is designed to present radio stations as a series of square icons that can be browsed by scrolling with your finger and tuned to by pressing. By accessing a station, there are tuning plus and minus buttons at the bottom of the station’s screen. All of these things–scrolling and pressing different areas of the screen to access a station or tune to a different frequency–are difficult to do safely while driving and maintaining attention to the road. The wrong areas are pressed leading one to cycle back through the process from the beginning by turning it off and re-accessing audio source > radio > station. To toggle through stations, I perched my right hand on the lower air vent below the screen and reached my index finger up to tap the station up and down buttons. It was awkward and frustrating. If automakers insist on using screens, there are situations like this where skeuomorphism and button placement and size should be consistent and easily used by the driver.
