Kyoto again

Well I did promise that I would write more about the trip to Kyoto, and it is now almost 2 weeks since we were there. So I guess I should do so before the memory fades further (seeing as how we are getting pretty old now)...

So breakfast.

Breakfast was a combination of rice, fish, tofu, and millions (or so it seemed) of small pickled vegetables. With orange juice and japanese tea.

The rice had been selected the night before. I thought I would be healthy and chose brown rice. Sonia picked white. She made the right decision, and I got it totally wrong. It turns out that white rice is your basic steamed white rice. Brown rice, however, is gluey porridge - almost. We decided that they probably cook it in a lot of water, and then serve without straining.

The fish on the other hand was quite good. A piece of something that had been marinated in some sort of soy sauce, then grilled. Tasty. The tofu was a couple of small cubes of tofu, served in soy milk in a paper "plate" on top of a burner - the burner was to heat up and cook the tofu. A metal plate underneath the paper took the brunt of the flame and heated the paper.

The orange juice is a strange taste when you put it into the context of a savoury breakfast. And of course we didn't really finish the pickled vegetables. Still, apart from my disastrous rice choice, breakfast was not bad. But quite a different taste to what us westerners are accustomed to.

We spent the first day walking around Kyoto in the drizzle. Sunday was not great weather-wise, but at least it did not pour down too hard. In Japan you can stop at any 7-11 (convenience store, like a dairy in NZ) which are on every corner (you will almost never need to walk more than 5 minutes to find one) to buy a disposable umbrella. Which we did.

We went to the market street first - narrow alleys filled with all sorts of interesting things, both edible and not. Edible includes vegetables (fresh or pickled), fish (dried or fresh), tea, meat (fresh, BBQed, grilled, etc), Japanese junk foods, and lots of ice-cream (of the snowfreeze style).

Lunch was okonomiyaki - a Japanese junk food pancake (sort of) - the sort of thing you might find in a food court except a bit better and much tastier.

Then off to one of the temples to have a look around - called Kiyomizu Dera. It is famous for the views (of trees as it turns out) and it's architecture/construction, which is pretty impressive. Because the weather was gray I didn't get a lot of great photos, but here are a couple.

This first one is one of the fountains at the entrance - to wash your hands (I think).

At another fountain inside the complex, it is considered good luck to drink the water. And lots of people line up to do so. The two ladies (mother and daughter) looked nice in their kimonos.
Then a view from one of the terraces - lots of trees.


More to come later. I have just received a text message from Sonia instructing me to buy some makeup for her from the duty-free shop (I am writing this at the airport). Since this will take about 10 minutes walk back from the gate (my current location), I better get moving.