It rained pretty heavily here in Kyoto all day yesterday. Although we brought good clothes for the weather, we were stubborn and didn't take enough out with us (something we remedied today). Our plan was to head over to Higashiyama, the main sight seeing area in Kyoto, and check out the temples / views of the city. We made it all the way to the first temple on the tour with about 5 stops for tea and warming along the way. Luckily, we made the short side trip into Tainai-meguri at the entrance. Hard to describe, and I'll leave it to you to make the trip to Kyoto to check it out. We more or less gave up due to weather after that and headed back to our favorite spot: Nishiki Market.
Other than that, the highlight of the day was our hunt for a good dinner place in downtown. According to Lonely Planet, there was a 300 year old soba noodle place near our Ryokan. Unfortunately, as we've strangely experienced with a bunch of eateries in the book so far, we weren't able to find it (nor the one we looked for next). Our best guess is that it used to be where they were doing construction on a parking lot.
It all turned out OK though, we settled on a small yakitori restaurant in the neighborhood. They had basically zero vegetarian options, but the chef was kind enough to whip up something custom for Emilie. It was a truly great experience, the place was very small and packed with Japanese business people either celebrating a going-away or a birthday or something else entirely... Anyways, the food ended up being amazing with a great sauce on the dishes. Amazingly there were only two guys running the entire thing!
Today, well bundled up, we bussed it out to Sagano to tour the bamboo grove and Tenryu-ji. We actually had just as much fun there as in the little town around the Arashiyama district. I'm sure it is probably like Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco for the Japanese, but we are tourists after all... Back in the city now after a great yudofu lunch and catching up on our internet addiction.
See the latest pictures at the end of this set.
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