Advertisement
Published: September 10th 2005
We're on the road again, or more accurately the rails, as we head south from Nikko to the temple crazy city of Kyoto.
Kyoto is Japan's favourite city, the cultural home of Japan, it was the captial for more than 1000 years until the Meiji Restoration moved the Imperial Family north to the present day capital of Tokyo. Kyoto was only settled for 150 years before it became the capital so you can see that it's pretty special.
The city is UNESCO World Heritage region with 17 Kyoto sites having priceless historic value for visitors and the Japanese public alike. There are more than 40 colleges and unviersities here and more schools of art than you can shake a stick at.
It's a really old city, built on the Chinese prinipal of grids it still retains it's long narrow network of streets due to the fact that it (fortunately) was spared during the ariel raids of 1945. It's a huge religious centre for the millions of Japanese that visit here every year who camp out and pray at many of the city's 2000 temples and shrines, I always feel kind of quilty just going to have a nosy
Sanjusangen-do
Built in 1164 by Emperor Go-Shirakawaand take a photo when they're all preying and clapping but I'm sure they take photo's of St Paul's and Westminister Abbey.
There are loads of amazing places around Kyoto, Osakam Nara, Koyasan etc so a lot of people base themselves in Kyoto and visit these places on day trips, we've planned to stay a couple of nights in all of the places so decided on 4 nights in Kyoto to explore the city as best as we could, so with shorts on and an unberella in hand, it's in the 30's here but rains a lot, we were off on our adventure.
It's a very walkable city, as was Tokyo, and you really can get about easily on foot, all the main temples are dotted around either the East or West side of the City though so it best to try and concentrate on one area each day. Or first port of call was up the East side to see the Matsunoo Grand Shrine, the Tenryuji Temple and the Daikakuji Temple amongst other things, it's real easy to get 'all Templed out'in this city so we're taking it easy and visiting the ones that have the most
historic significane, or in Fiona's case, the prettiest.
Kyoto is also famous for it's training of Geisha's, the beautiful doll like ladies that shuffle about in traditional dress with the chalk white faces, Geisha's are an old art of Japanese entertainment, they put on a show, at a hefty price, for wealthy locals and businessmen over dinner. They play the harp, sing old ballads and dance a traditional jig for the fee paying punters. The Geisha are traditionally from Kyoto and speak in an old Kyoto dialect, the master Geisha's have their own apprentices, Maiko, watching and learning from their every move. There's only about 100 practising Geisha left in Kyoto and about 80 Maiko in training, it is an amazing sight to see them shuffeling down the streets but a wee bit over budget to get them to dance for us, we wouldn't know what to do anyway........
We also has our first Sushi expereince in Kyoto, I mean real Sushi experience, we've had it before in Edinburgh and ate quite a bit of it in Japanese restaurants in Melbourne but this was a wee bit different, Sushi the way it's meant to be, fast, fidly and
fishy,
We walked into this restaurant and everyone started shouting at us, in a good way, a warm welcome, we were the only foreigners in the place, and we were ushered to a seat at the bar directly in front on the chef, who, like me, knows how to speak to someone who doesn't understand the language, you shout and repeat things, lot's of times, progressively louder. So the lay out of the place is a U shape around the chef, everyone sitting at the bar, it's all stainless steel and there's tank with plenty of fish swimming around, obviously just for show right? Wrong.
We've been given a menu with pictures of fish on it with some ambiguous Enlish translation on it like "Bastard Halibut" and "Dirty Sea Bass", I kid you not that's what they were called, so while we're laughing at the menu some dude orders something next to us, the chef has a look in his display and he's out of whatever it is the guy wants, what he done next will live with me till the day I die.
He takes what can only be described as a broken broom handle, gets
a big nail and ties it to the wood with string, he then hangs over this huge fish tank and spears himself a brown one, I mean he pulls it out the water, takes it off the nail and it's wriggling about in his hands, he shoves it down on the table in front of us, holds down it's over excited tail and cuts it's head off, slices it open, chucks some of it in the bin, cuts out a piece and rolls it onto some rice then waps it on this dudes plate, and he doesnae even raise an eye lid, he keeps on reading his paper and shoved it in his mouth. Fiona and me are speachless, that fish was swimming about no more than 90 seconds ago, content with it's lot, two minutes later half it's stomach is in some dudes belly. The chef notices us staring, open mouthed, and takes the liberty of ordering us a couple of beers, good call, a few beers and 16 different pieces of raw fish later we were satisfied and amazed at out dining experience.
It was a great experience, a wee bit pricey but well worth it, and
so healthy, all you get is a wee bit of fish rolled on to a wee bit of rice, none of this wrapped in seaweed nonsense that we do, shoved on a plate, wee bit of soy sauce and down the hatch, top stuff and dead tasty. Obviously I tried the Bastard Halibut and it's wasn't the best, it felt like I was eating raw fish, I know that sounds bizarre but some of it, shrimp, salmon, tuna, shark, just tasted like you were eating meat, tender, juicy, nice, otheres, halibut, sea bass, trout etc all tasted like you had just taken a bite out of a raw fish, which in both cases you had but in the latter it tasted like it, texture wise, if you ken what I mean?
Anyway it was teckle and another amazing thing that we noticed that's different here is that the Japanese put a hefty premium on fatty meats, fatty steak or fishy is more than twice the prices of the lean stuff, very bizarre, fatty tuna was teh dearest thing on the menu, so needless to say we didn't try it, don't fancy fatty meat, no matter how expensive it is.
Domo Arigato..........
Advertisement
Tot: 0.112s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 12; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0585s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
