Ticket to ramen


Advertisement
Japan's flag
Asia » Japan » Kyoto » Kyoto
January 8th 2010
Published: January 8th 2010
Edit Blog Post

Awoke to a beautifully sunny yet cold day and had a very enjoyable breakfast of green bread that tasted of melons - much better than it sounds I promise! 

We had a busy schedule planned of sightseeing and shopping so we disappeared straight down the beeping subway cavern. We were heading for Nishiri food market but first we had to traverse the underground mall on route to the subway.

Full of Kyoto's young and beautiful, there was more trying on, spending and general rumaging than on Oxford St on Dec 26th. All of this is accompanied by calls of 'welcome' from each sales assistant so that the noise produced is akin to a turkey farm. I resisted the urge to go join them although the force was strong that day.

We made it eventually to the covered food market and although the fish stalls were packing up, there were plenty of interesting sights to keep us occupied. We browsed one fresh veg shop where I swear I could only ID maybe 10% of the items on display. This included individually wrapped bright red carrots well over a foot long and bags of pink salt. Most veg shops were also selling lots of small dark berry-type things which were used to make a tea. One shop was giving out free samples so we gave it a go and wasn't half bad, quite smokey tasting and I'm sure it was doing us lots of good.

Apart from fantastically extensive saki shops, there was also hand painted fan and chopsticks shops. I would normally say these were aimed at western tourists and yes, we were in there but, so were plenty of Japanese so my purchases didn't feel quite so contrived.
  
One thing I will come away with is the knowledge that, along with dogs, the Japanese have an obssesion of all things small or furry or with large eyes, preferably all in the same package. Be it teddy bears in kimonos or strawberry earmuffs, it's all good to go here. Unfortunately, I've not been able to track down any ninja wellies but I have purchased a rather fetching pair of socks so I will proudly show these off when we next meet. 

From here we walked to the Kyoto equivalent of York's Shambles with a heavy emphasis on restaurants. Spotted some fantastic menus on offer including some roosted oysters - I didn't even realize oysters could perch, let alone roost? We were also lucky to catch the briefest of glimpses of a geisha (or possibly a trainee) nipping in through the door of one establishment - this was a rare find as there are now so few of them - her beautiful kimono positively lit up the street.

Next we crossed the river to the subway and made a quick stop to photograph the many black-eared kites that were annoying the gulls. The bridge was pretty busy so we afforded quite a few funny looks but done very politely of course.

The rest of the afternoon was spent pottering around the Imperial Palace, one of many World Heritage sites in Kyoto. The Emperor now resides in the palace in Tokyo but investature of new monarchs still occurs in Kyoto. The inner palace with it's nightingale floors (purposely made to squeak to guard against intruders) was closed for unknown reasons. All the literature we had and even the signs at the palace itself said it should have been open so it was a disappointment but we occupied ourselves well enough walking in the gardens.  

We did manage to see some particularly excellent signs, including 'no scribbling here' on the ancient wooden doors and a 'filth container' in the toilets. Whilst on a visit to said facilities, I could hear a tannoy announcement outside. Otherwise occupied, I ignored it until it dawned on me what the music was they played afterwards. Visitors are respectfully asked to make their way to the exit to the accompaniment of Old Lang Syne!

We received free tickets to visit the Kyoto Tower as it was part of the hotel, so we popped up there on our way out for dinner that night. We were escorted in the lift by a uniformed lady in white gloves who bowed at quite literally everything and prevented any thought of wayward fingers by a restraining hand in front of the lift doors each time they opened or shut. I am happy to say that she did her job well as no fingers were indeed pinched. The views from the observation deck were impressive with the temples and shrines lit up against the night sky. At least we can say we have seen most of them now although alas, not close up.

Now I am not proud and will freely admit that I like a bit of tourist tat when it comes to my desk at work. The odd plastic platypus or Vegas snowglobe helps to while away the 9 to 5 hours. With this in mind, you can imagine my joy to find possibly the world's biggest tat market slap bang beneath the hotel! Unfortunately however, due to unforeseen time penalties imposed by Mr Fiennes (something to do with missing a bullet train), I did not have the chance to explore to the extent I would have wished. On the years ahead, I know, this is something I shall always regret.  

For an easy dinner, we headed across the road to the train station and it's 2  floored food court. We fancied a bowl of something noodley so the ramen restaurants on the 10th floor fit the bill. Here you peruse the windows until you spot something to you liking and then purchase it via a ticket machine - a bit like a large-scale vending machine. You're then shown to a table to await your meal and given some green tea to keep you occupied.

This particular restaurant was pretty busy which always seems a good sign, so I busied myself by watching how the other diners tackled their various bowls. I'd read that it was positively impolite not to slurp one's noodles but was unsure of the exact protocol. After a mere minute of observation, it was clear that the noisier you could do it, the better and a sustained lengthy slurp was preferential to series of short slurps. Taking the above into account when our meals arrived, we got into slurping mode. I didn't have too much problem with the noise aspect but the long slurps quickly left me out of puff!   

Tomorrow we set out for the uber wintry world of Hokkaido via Tokyo so back on the bullet train for us, followed by a short 1.5hr flight. We're booked in at the small Nature-Inn Lodge which is where all the birders stay so I'm looking forward to the home cooked Japanese meals while Mark's looking forward to Stellar's Sea Eagle.

See you there!
TTFN, Lisa x

Advertisement



Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0443s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb