By day 2 we successfully conquered the train/subway system and ticket machines! But we did learn something new: if the entire train is full and there happens to be an empty coach, it's because it's a "women only" exclusive coach!
Kyoto is the land of shrines; it was like being a part of Old Macdonalds Rhyme, here a shrine there a shrine everywhere a shrine shrine. We started our day with Tofuku-ji boasting by far the most spectacular gardens with vibrant fall foliage. Clearly a lot of people had the same idea as us because that place was packed! It was ironic that a place that was meant to be zen was chaotic and noisy what with the guards yelling at us to move on. But in the midst of all the madness we did catch some beautiful sights of autumn in all its glory.
Next stop: Honke Owariya, a fancy shmancy soba place in central Kyoto. We managed to get there just in time to beat the lunch crowd. The udon version of the dish I tried was satisfactory. Was it the best? Not really. Making our way to the Kyoto International Manga Museum we satisfied our sweet tooth with a delicious mocha doughnut( Japanese doughnuts look about the same as regular ones but are more chewy).
But yes, the manga museum is really more of a library of every manga published from the early 1950s. Manga is just the Japanese word for comic book. Artists created drawings and stories to create these comic books and when these were published, they wee called T. Although most of them were in Japanese, a select section carried Manga in other languages, i.e. based on the country they originated from. I'm by no means a manga fan, but I was fascinated by the plethora of manga at the museum. I was especially happy to see some familiar ones: Naruto, Dragon Ballz, Pokemon..
Our next stop was Fushimi District, also known as the sake district! A quaint little town with rustic architecture, Fushimi houses the major sake breweries in Kyoto. We made our way to Gekkeihan Okura Sake Museum to learn about sake making lol. Nope, it was really for the sake tasting and the complimentary sake to take home! Gekkeihan originally founded in the 1620s is one of the oldest sake breweries. A quick self tour of the museum gave us all we needed to know about tools and techniques they used. The best part was obviously the free tasting of their premium sake and plum wine.
Having worked up an appetite by now we made a pit stop at Toriseihonten, in my opinion the tastiest yakitori place I've been to. The thing to get is green pepper stuffed with minced chicken and chicken legs.
Tripadvisor's number one attraction in Kyoto, Fushimi Inari Taisha is a series of shrines interleaved with tori gates all the way up to the top of Mt. Inari. The orange tori made from bamboo inscribed in Japanese make for some amazing photo opps. After paying our respects at the shrine, we made our way to the Kyoto train station for some good old conveyor belt sushi. The concept is pretty straight forward. They charge by the plate ( special price plates for fatty tuna: toro) and so they come by and tally up what you've eaten.
We wrapped up with another foot massage at the same place from the previous night lol. And of course some last minute shoyu and Kara-miso ramen because why not?
No comments:
Post a Comment