Today's plan was to meet our dear friend Tomoko, who was our first Japanese teacher 13 years ago when she was working on her Masters degree at the University of Rochester, & who took a train from her home in Kanazawa (a 2-hour trip) to meet us here in Kyoto. Brendan & I worked with Tomoko for the first few years of our Japanese studies, then she went on to the University of Minnesota to do PhD work, returning to Japan to work in the student counseling center of the University of Kanazawa. We have stayed in touch all these years and were absolutely delighted that she could spend a day with us in Kyoto!
Because we were headed to Kyoto Station to meet Tomoko at around 10:15, we thought we'd eat breakfast at one of the cafes in the station. However, although Charlie & I both slept through the night (finally!), we were up really early, so I decided to open the box of delicious Yatsuhachi that I'd purchased yesterday, for an early snack with some tea. Just to hold me over until breakfast :) Yatsuhatchi is sheets of mochi that are made from rice flour & have been steamed (rather than pounded until smooth & sticky). They add matcha tea, cinnamon, and other flavours to the mochi & then place a dollop of anko (red bean paste) in the middle and fold it over on the diagonal. Because it's Fall, you can get them with a chestnut in the middle, which is what I bought.
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| First breakfast. |
Soooo yummy!! After our snack (Charlie also partook) we headed out to the station to catch the subway to Kyoto Station. The local station's cafe was practically empty, so we decided to eat there, rather than at the much busier Kyoto Station. I had Royal Milk Tea made with soy milk (a real treat!) and a melon pan, which is bread dough baked with cookie dough on top. It's crumbly & messy, but delicious.
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| Second breakfast! |
We got to the station a little before 10:00 am, so we bought some special tea sweets (a present for Tomoko & some for us) and then went to meet Tomoko at the main gate. Kyoto Station has some very dramatic architecture.
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| Random cuteness in Kyoto Station |
It is not only a train station but has a department store & loads of little shops selling bento and omiyage (little gifts, usually food, that are local specialties). We were so happy to see Tomoko when she arrived! We visited her in Kanazawa on our last trip to Japan, so it's been 1 1/2 years since we'd last seen her. We found a little cafe in the department store that had some gorgeous cakes, and stopped there to catch up with Tomoko, FaceTime with Brendan (so Tomoko could see Brendan & chat with him), and try some of the lovely cakes.
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| Third breakfast! (I am becoming a Hobbit by now...) |
We left the cafe around noon, but since we'd just eaten, we decided to head for the Shimogamo Jinja, a Shinto shrine that is featured in one of our favourite anime, Uchouten Kazoku (The Eccentric Family). We hadn't visited Shimogamo on any of our previous visits & thought it would be a fun thing to do with Tomoko. We took a taxi from the station, and had another first in Japan- our first lady taxi driver! She spoke English and chatted with us all the way to the shrine. The shrine is connected to a beautiful forest that is also famous as a serene place to visit. Today was pretty warm, so it was a cool place to visit, too. There's a stream running through the forest that had been recreated from archeological excavations, based on ancient drawings of the shrine (which dates back to the 6th century). On our walk through the forest, on a very wide path, we saw beautiful red flowers that Tomoko told us are called Higanbana, and are associated with the afterlife.
There were also ancient trees that are considered holy.
There was also considerable damage from the previous week's typhoon, the same one that hit Osaka so badly. Uprooted trees were everywhere.
When entering a shrine or temple, it's customary to purify yourself by rinsing your hands at a natural spring. Shimogamo's spring is situated in an old, traditional boat, which was really interesting.
Most shinto shrines are actually a collection of shrines, venerating different gods & goddesses in buildings large and small. Most have a place for you to place a coin in a box & say a prayer, sometimes with a bell to ring to get the god's attention. The main gate at Shimogamo is really beautiful.
There are all sorts of lovely places tucked away, like this bridge over the stream.
The stream gets wider and they have a little building where you can buy gifts & omamori (good luck charms) and an unusual kind of omikuji (fortune telling) system called "mizumikuji". You buy a paper fortune & then take it out to the stream & float it in the water, & the water reveals your fortune, Tomoko & I did this for fun.
Neither of us got "daikichi" or the best luck fortunes (but we didn't get the worst, either :) so we tied them to a fence there to purify our less-than great fortune. After all the wandering around we were ready for refreshment. There was a little shop at the shrine that sold traditional summer treats, so we went for it! Tomoko & I had oshiruko, which is soup made from red bean paste (cold for the summer) with little mochi balls in it. Charlie had an enormous kakigori (shaved ice) mixed with condensed milk and strawberry jam. It was all delicious! We asked a shop person about the leaf pattern on the teacups, and discovered that they are Aoi leaves, which is the Japanese word for hollyhocks (and the meaning of Aoi-chan's name!). They are the symbol of the Shimogamo Jinja and found everywhere as decoration.
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| Fourth breakfast (haven't had lunch yet, so, yeah...) |
After this little snack, we thought we should find some more substantial food, but it was just around 3:00 pm and all of the local noodle shops were closed because it was between lunch & dinner time. The energy I got from the oshiruko was wearing off, so we decided to take the train back toward the part of town where our hotel is & see if we could have dinner at a kaiseki (traditional Kyoto cuisine, served in courses) restaurant. Since we needed a bit more sustenance to get us through to 4:30 pm, when the kaiseki restaurant opened, we stopped at Starbucks (which I didn't bother to photograph :).
And then, after wandering around narrow alleys full of cool shops, and asking for directions (finally) we made it to Tagoto Honten! Since we were early (4:45) they had plenty of room for us. Later on, we'd have needed a reservation, perhaps days ahead, to be seated. Kaiseki ryori is amazing & very popular. I had a set featuring tofu dishes, including do-it-yourself yuba (the skin skimmed from boiling soy milk, which is eaten with soy sauce like sashimi) which I have wanted to try for a long time. When you're done skimming the soy milk, they add a coagulating agent (described to us as sea water, but at home when I've made tofu you use epsom salts) and you eat the rest as tofu. Charlie & Tomoko had a set that featured tenpura. It was all amazing!
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| Yuba sashimi (premade) |
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| Soup with moon-shaped tofu |
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| An assortment of omelet rolls, veggies, and tofu |
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| Soy milk on a heater |
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| Ready to skim the yuba |
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| Yuba in soy sauce |
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| Tofu made from the leftover soy milk |
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| Grilled tofu with miso |
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| A tiny nabe (hot pot) |
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| Dessert- warabi mochi and strawberry ice cream with pears. |
After dinner, Tomoko called her mom who lives near Fukuoka City, way down south in Kyushu, who we've stayed with twice on early visits to Japan, and is very dear to us. I was able to chat with Nobuko-san for a few minutes and it was lovely just to hear her voice. Then we helped Tomoko find her way to the subway station for her voyage back to Kyoto Station to catch her train home to Kanazawa. It was a totally amazing day! I'm so grateful for all the friends we have here in Japan. I'm grateful to Tomoko for giving me the foundation in Japanese that allows me to talk to & understand her mom, and other folks here who don't speak English, and to have relationships with them in spite of living on opposite sides of the world. I learn so much every time I visit Japan. And now, off to bed with a full tummy & a full heart :)
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