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Published: August 8th 2007
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At the market, Josie sneaked this pic in while the storeholder wasnt looking :) How could we not visit Kyoto on our trip to Japan 😊 Luckily we could stay with Mayumi and do day trips to Kyoto which is less than an hour away by train. Now, Kyoto is famous for it's numerous cultural sights and temples. In fact it is so full of them that it can be very confusing and overwhelming. Most of the tourists visit this place straight after Tokyo. As we have just seen many temples in Nara we decided to take a different approach and made our way to the Nishiki Food Market - what else??! It was again sooo interesting to look at all these ingredients that we didn't even know. We just can't get enough!
After the market we went Geisha spotting - soon it became clear that it was more like Geisha stalking as the district was full of tourists waiting to get a glimpse of the beauties. The Geisha establishments are still only accessible by Japanese people. These places prefer regular customers and so you can only get in if one of them invites you to. Therefore, the only time to spot geishas is really on their way to work at late afternoon, early
evening. They walk fast but very graciously with no real expressions in their faces. This is when the tourists stick their cameras in their faces to get a picture for back home. As the geishas do not pose or even stop for pictures it is very difficult to say if they enjoy this spectacle. The geisha district is very nice with loads of little streets to wander around. At one time when we walked down one of these little alleys we could hear footsteps behind us. Not thinking anything we turned around and there they were, two beautiful geishas on the way to work. Josie jumped back to make space for the fast paced women and they passed us ghost like and left a very intense impression. We wondered a bit more around that district and looked at the old houses spotting even more geishas.
Slowley but surely we made our way back to the train station walking through numerous old, little streets which now have been deserted as it was early evening and the temples and shrines around them close at about 18:00. It was great to be there by ourselves and we enjoyed the walk. On the
way we found an Tempanyaki/Okonomiyaki place and as it was full of Japanese (always a good sign) we decided to have our dinner there. Delicious! So our first day in Kyoto came to an end and very much satisfied we returned to Nara for the night.
On the second visit to Kyoto we still decided to take it easy and started our day with a visit to a japanese garden. It was very nice to stroll around and hide under the trees from the heat of the day. After that we went to a wooden temple which was nominated for the new 7th world wonder. Roughly knowing which direction to go we followed little streets rather than the tourist packed alley and ended up walking through a big graveyard which was scattered with little temples and absolutely no one there apart from few Japanese. The temple was nice but again very very busy as one of the main tourist attractions in Kyoto. Also, it was full of lucky charms that you could buy and many other ways to buy your luck and happiness. It was actually a bit like a big fortune supermarket with anything you need, e.g. good
luck in exams, happy marriage, reaching conception. Fatal if you get the wrong one if you ask me 😉 Soon we decided that we should use our time more wisely and start to look for some good food. We had few recommendations from a book we borrowed from Bob about the old Kyoto. Some restaurantes looked really interesting and many were established for more than 200 years. The big search begun, luckilly we found our first choice straight away, unluckily it was fully booked 😞 The next one we found as well - but this one was closed!!! The other places were not that easy to find following descriptions like "with a big red lantern outside" ???!?!? WHAT??! How big is big?! There were thousands of lanterns, all red absolutely everywhere! Finally we decided to treat ourselves and go to a sukiyaki restaurant. Mostly these restaurantes serve sukiyaki and shabu shabu. It is all about the meat here and you pay accordingly for the quality of meat you order. Funnily enough, the fatter the meet the higher the bill. The most preferred beef is called marbled beef and this is exactly how it looks like. We splashed out to try
Pickles
Pickles on the market. The smell of them is quite distinct, and one I cannot really describe. Pickly I guess, but not like in the west somehow. the recommended beef. We were presented with a big pot of sauce mixed of sake, water and soy sauce. Then you were cooking the meat and the vegetables in that sauce. The meat was very juicy but somewhat too fatty for our taste. We could not imagine what has been done to the cows to make the fillet to be so full of fat. In Europe you pay more for less fat - each to their own I guess. Nevermind, it was something we definately wanted to try but we both did not think that it really lived up to our expectaions and cetrainly not to the price. We did, however, get a nice view over Kyoto by night from the top of the train station. With full bellies we returned to Nara 😊
Our last excursion to Kyoto, or rather two stations before Kyoto was to the Fushimi Inari shrine. There you can see hundreds of red gates. It is nicely placed in a forest on a hill, and certainly not full at all. A very nice place for a walk if you want to escape the crowds and still see something spectacular.
After those 3 days
Dried Squid
Eat as part of a dish or even as a snack I think. Squid Jerky...hhmmmmmm maybe not of Kyoto we decided that was enough for us 😊 There are just so many temples and shrines you can see and we have reached our limit. We had to find something else to entertain us so we headed back to the place that would have it - Tokyo.
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