Life with MK: Exploring Kyoto

This morning began my first full day in Japan. We woke up pretty early since we had fallen asleep by 9:30pm, so we had a slow morning before we had our breakfast come at 8am. Dad had a traditional Japanese breakfast and my mom and I had a western style breakfast that was pretty delicious! After breakfast we met out tour guide Kazue at the Ryokan. Since it was raining we took a taxi to the Kiyomizu Temple to begin our day. Apparently it is one of the most famous and popular temples in all of Japan, and is generally very crowded. Due to the rain we lucked out and we didn't have a bad crowd at all! The special Moon Garden was also open today, and it is only open twice per year for ten days at a time so we lucked out! The garden was quite beautiful, but there were no pictures allowed. We did spend the equivalent of just under $3 to buy some pictures of the garden to take home, which was nice. We spent a good amount of time at the temple area and saw the many shrines and temples on the grounds. It was a really beautiful place, despite the rainy weather.

After the temple we set off to walk around part of Kyoto. We did a little shopping and a LOT of taste testing as we walked by many shops. There were candies, soups, drinks, and so many little things to taste and try along the way. I purchased some tea-bag like soup broth and some spices to make when I get home, as well as some really cool jelly soap and some mango-honey syrup that you can mix with water as a drink or use on desserts! There was so much more I wanted to buy even! We saw some beautiful houses and shops, and even women dressed in traditional kimonos complete with the full white make-up, granted the three girls we saw in full make-up were not Japanese, but from Thailand and Germany! It was a really great walk and I really loved the area. I also discovered this really awesome Kyoto artist that has done a lot of paintings for temples and shops around the city. He has some shops of his own as well, and I was really close to buying a backpack with some beautiful red, black, and gold koi pattern, but as usual I couldn't commit.

Out next stop was lunch, and we went to a noodle place that was really good. We started off with some tea, as we have become very accustomed to here and ordered some tempmusubi, which was basically rice around a tempura shrimp wrapped in a piece of seaweed. It was exactly like Spam musubi, but with tempura shrimp instead of Spam. It was amazing! I then had beef soba for lunch and that was also quite excellent. We chatted for a bit about Japan, and life in general and had a wonderful time.

After lunch we walked down a main street with lots of little shops to the subway station where we took a shuttle to see the Fushimi-Inari Shrine. The shrine is made up of ton of gates and it is so cool and interesting. We had a great time walking around and seeing all the beautiful gates juxtaposed with the bright green foliage. It was quite amazing. Kazume also said a little prayer to at the study shrine for my Step 1 exam, so hope it worked! Kazume left us here as our 6 hours were up, so we explored a bit more and then took the train back to the Ryokan where we rested for a bit. Everytime we get back I swear they have tea and some kind of small treat. It is pretty awesome.

After resting we set out to Gion to find some dinner. It was still pouring, so we all got pretty wet, but we had a nice walk along the river to get there. Oh, and I forgot to say that we did get a reprieve from the rain for much of the middle of the day. Anyways, we ended up eating at a place called Junidanya and I had some of the best tempura I have ever eaten! It was so delicious! All of us liked out respective meals and enjoyed having a real seat and table instead of sitting on the floor. We deeded to take a taxi home from dinner since we didn't feel like getting wet more, and through the language barrier managed to get back to the right place. It helped that we weren't very far away and it was basically a straight shot back!

When we got back I took a lovely shower and now we're just relaxing before getting some sleep. Tomorrow we are taking a trip out to Nara to see some more wonderful things!