Our first free day! Warm and sunny. We had our last breakfast of milk bread toast (a Japanese favorite, sort of like Wonder Bread only much thicker) and fried egg at Clark's Coffee and moved out of the Shiran Kaikan, back to the Kyoto Royal Hotel and Spa.
Since the hotel is centrally located, we were only a short walk from Nishiki Market, a favorite place to learn about Japanese food, much of which I can only guess at. Many foods are prepared right there, such as tea roasting, matcha grinding, mochi making, soy skin preparation, etc. And of course always free samples of pickles! We had our favorite Nishin Soba for lunch (dried herring in soup), did some shopping and ended up at Ipodo do for a cup of fragrant sencha tea, lovingly prepared at the table with water of exactly 80 degrees C. and of course a fall sweet.
In the evening we met the Oyama family for dinner in the Fushimi area. Delicious meal, even though we were very exhausted. The restaurant is called Kizura Kappa Country in an old sake brewery. (A Kappa is a horrible mythological creature, sort of a scaley, beaked, humanoid about which there are many legends, notably that it pulls humans under water, does nasty things, and people drown.) We talked about ghosts in Noh plays and Shakespeare - but no Kappas to be seen. We also received a kind invitation to return to Kyoto in early March! Win and Satoki chan bonded, and English was not in the least necessary. By the end they were holding hands on the way back to the train.
We quickly collapsed thereafter.
We send love.
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| Win and friend |
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| Kappa |
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