We board the first shinkansen of the trip after a two hour bus ride in Nagoya – Asa’s mother’s hometown!
At top speed, the Shinkansen runs at 199 mph. With Kyoto being about as far from Nagoya as Philadelphia is from New York City, we’re amazed with how it only takes us 30 minutes to get to our next destination.
A short walk from Kyoto Station is our Airbnb, our home for the next six days of the trip. Located just a stone’s throw from the station and right next to a small shrine, it’s in an ideal location. Plus! There’s a neighbor kitty that’s been greeting us most mornings.
A big desire of Sean’s has been to learn about the sake scene in Japan. It just so happened that the same excellent and educational class Asa and I took about sake back in 2019 in Kyoto was still running! They had some availability the same night we arrived, so we started our stay learning (and re-learning) about sake, it’s categories, qualities, and what type of sake we liked and didn’t like.
We sampled fruity, dry, rich, light, floral, cloudy, and aged types of sake. Asa and I preferred the rich, dry type, Sean opted for the cloudy type. Paired with some yummy bites, too, we experienced how the taste of sake can enhance a dish, and vice versa. We’d like to think we came away a bit more confident when picking out our next bottle of sake… but we’ll see!
Following the tasting, we all knew we needed some more food. Sean found a great place to dine with so many small plates on the menu to taste and try. Our dinner for the evening included gyoza, fried chicken, fried sweet potato, sushi, raw egg over rice, quail eggs, and shiitake mushrooms. But I think the wildest thing I tried was a matcha beer. It was quite delightful, with a bit of a sweetness at the end of it. As you’ll see below, perfect for St. Patrick’s Day.
From dinner, we met up with our friends Deme and company again as our itineraries overlapped in Kyoto! The evening ended at a bar on Pontocho Alley where several people partook in the classic form of Japanese entertainment – karaoke. Sean represented us well with a personal rendition of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” – featuring moments of falsetto and followed with “Hey Ya” by OutKast. Was the whole bar singing along? Absolutely. Were we the only ones in the bar along with four other people? Absolutely.
Eventually, the clock struck midnight and we headed back to our Kyoto home for the night.
The next day, Asa and I find our coffee spot that will become our go-to for the rest of the time here – Solkatt Coffee Kyoto. As I write this post, we have now visited three times and each have ordered two coffees each. It’s that good of coffee. Plus, the owner is extremely welcoming and kind.
We take the morning of our first full day in Kyoto to visit the Kyoto Botanical Gardens – it’s quieter, not busy with crowds, which we wanted to avoid. It features multiple gardens, included a European garden and a Bonsai Exhibit.
We worked up an appetite and decided to choose a more fun experience for lunch – conveyor belt sushi! Sushi comes around on small plates on a conveyor belt that you can pick up for yourself, or you can order from the tablet at the table. When you place an order, within a few minutes, your plate of sushi is delivered directly to your table on an upper conveyor belt. Once you finish your plate of sushi (only containing 1-2 pieces), you put the plate into a little slot next to the tablet. For every 5 plates you put into the slot, the tablet brings up a little chance mini game. Unfortunately, we never won, but man it was an incentive that seemed to work to get us to order more. I guess it’s like gambling with sushi, but you always win… because you’re eating sushi…
That evening we find another climbing gym, it’s the most efficient gym we have ever been to in terms of route setting. The holds were extremely close to one another and each of them labeled with a number and a color. We had to memorize the route prior to climbing so we didn’t lost track of where to place a hand or foot when on the wall. It was fun to experience a new type of challenge we haven’t seen before. And the gym also featured a little hamster at the front desk! From the gym, we had some earned beers and one of my favorite Japanese dishes – okonomiyaki!
Okay so that was on… Saturday… which means now we move to Sunday. It’s starting to be that time of the trip where we lose track of days and things that happened a week ago feels like it happened three months ago.
So Sunday – we explore a shrine and a temple! At the To-Ji Temple, we had the luck of being around the same time they hold a monthly market. We weaved through the many aisles of merchants (with a coffee in hand of course) and walked away with a wall scroll that we look forward to hanging in our home. We had to say no to many things, but we loved being able to see the variety of artisanal Japanese goods.
After our morning market, we go to the famous Fushimi Inari shrine, where hundreds of torii gates line the trails and walkways throughout the grounds. With it being a popular tourist destination, you can’t avoid the hoards of people that start the hike up from the main shrine. But after the overlook, the crowd thins, leaving us to carry a steady pace as we hike to the summit.
We meet back with Sean for a late lunch of gyukatsu – delicious beef cutlets, breaded and fried served with dipping sauces and for dessert, black sesame ice cream. It turns out a heavy lunch and busy morning of walking makes a great combination for an afternoon nap.
That evening, we have some yummy unagi and convenience store snacks for dessert. Some games are played at our airbnb and we wrap up yet another successful day of our Japan adventure.
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