Taste of Kyoto

FRIDAY
The all night bus between Hiroshima and Kyoto dumped me at a blurry carpark on Friday morning at 7am. I had before me a very specific set of instructions to find my Kyoto couch manned by the very capable Mr Jean-Baptiste.

[2] From Sanjo/Sanjokeihan station (bus, subway, train
keihan line) to my place:
This station, the center of the lively area, is on the
east side of the bridge, in front of a yellow book
shop. From the book shop, go north (where the
mountains are) along the big river kamogawa, for about
6 minutes. You will pass a Fresco opened 24/24. You
have to turn right not the next street, but the
second one (150 meters after). There should be a
bridge on your left and vending machines in the
corner. So you turn and walk for 200m on the right
side, pass a Michelin ad, a bakery, and 20 meters
after, there is a mansion called Maison FUJI (in
katakana, it says メゾンフジ), with a spiral
staircase directly on the sidewalk. I'm here on the
4th floor.

After getting a little lost and found then heaving 30kgs of luggage up 3 flight of stairs I was delighted to be greeted by a very sweet French (self-declared) geek. He warmly welcomed me with a breakfast of Natto and rice.
Now I have been warned about this thing called natto that only the crazy locals can love. It's fermented soy beans in this sticky, stringy, spider webby goo. On it's own it tasted like dirty dishwashing sponge that's then been covered in stringy silky spider webs. The taste gets a little dulled out when accompanied with rice, but still not that pleasurable to my untrained palette.

Post Natto session JB brought me to the center of Kyoto and went on his geeky way for a day with his computers. I went for a wonder around the ancient imperial capital of Japan. Kyoto also houses the last of Japan's geisha schools, though you'll be lucky to spot a genuine geisha as it's common for women to wear kimonos around town.


The city is a must-see destination for tourists in Japan. It offers everything you'd want to see, experience or buy in one sweet spot. Kyoto has many specialty crafts (wooden combs), food and of course shops and temples/shrines.



Surrounded by water and mountains it wont take long to get away from the crazy commercial center and escape to somewhere green. I was lucky that JB had 2 bikes for us to excursion around on. We did a night ride along the river to Fushimi Inari Shrine the thousand gates that tunneled up the mountain out onto a sparkling view of the city.



SATURDAY led into a lazy afternoon stroll along the Philosophers path (哲学の道) popping into temples along the way and stopping down a cute little French cafe 'Pomme' to read our horoscopes and muse about the big carp in the canal.





Dinner at the best ramen joint in town.

SUNDAY was a day with jam packed plans of bike riding, building seeing, mountain climbing and monkey watching.
We stumbled across this flea market in a shrine as we rode along our merry ways.
Check out http://fashiontrophies.blogspot.com/ for all my new finds.


It was the perfect day for wanderings...





We rode up to the West-end gate of Kyoto and chilled at a traditional snack bar with a helping of their exquisite sticky desert Dango served with salty sakura tea and refreshing green tea.


The delicious pit-stop gave us plenty of energy to power on. We were destined for Arashiyama (嵐山), a serene ride through the bamboo forest and onto the Monkey mountain.






The playful monkeys were really chilled, and some were cheeky enough to try and survey my bag for foodage. I was tempted to pet one, they look so soft like chinchillas...
To top of the Kyoto experience we went out for a meal of yakiniku (焼肉). Perfect ending for just a taste of Kyoto. Many thanks to JB for sharing Kyoto with me, I'm sure to return for more.