Arashiyama 嵐山

One of our excursion during out time in Kyoto was to the district of Arashiyama 嵐山.  It was a touristy, extremely picturesque destination with a lovely river running between two small mountains.  A bridge connects the two sides.

A semi-hidden attraction is the natural bamboo forest.  For L and I it took a little bit to find, but along the way you get to walk around the little town and try bits and pieces of food.  Particularily I tried the black soy soft serve ice cream.  It was indeed very fragrant of soy bean and was definitely one of the more interesting items I ate on this trip.

As for the bamboo forest, it was very serene and awe-inspiring.  Although not very big, the tall shoots provided enough cover to fully immerse you into the ambiance.  Too bad you weren’t allowed to actually walk through the forest though.

Random Eatings – Kyoto, Japan

Here’s just some more pictures from the rest of the food I ate in Kyoto.  This will be quite the wordless post.  Sorry~

This is from the food department at Daimaru 大丸 department store.  Fujiya 不二家 here in Canada is mostly known for their milky caramel candy.  There they have complete restaurants (which I’ll get to later) and also sells other confectioneries, cakes, etc.  This is the milk pudding.  It comes with that adorable mug.

This was more like a cooked flan though, not as Japanese-pudding-y as I would’ve liked.

Their famous Sweet Potatoe Pie.  It would’ve been much better if we could’ve heated it up somehow, it was kinda dry.

Genzou 元蔵 – Nishiki 錦市場 Kyoto, Japan

One of the must-visit streets of Kyoto is Nishiki 錦市場, which is basically a long wet-market corridor.  It’s mostly food, seafood and produce sold here but they have some souvenir shops also.  But mostly, just food.

Nishiki, and Kyoto, are known for their preserved pickled vegetables.  The Japanese (and Asian) version of pickles are more salt-based than vinegar-based, which I enjoy more.  They really pickle anything.  Most commonly radishes (daikon).  They also pickle broccoli, cucumbers, eggplants, cabbage, taro, green onions, seaweed, mushrooms, really, anything.  All of these types of shops offer free samples.  I know.  I went there a lot =D

Despite having already eaten a lot on our walk down Nishiki (we had fresh fish-cake tempura…mine had quail egg in the middle), we also looked for a place to eat.

Genzou 元蔵 looked like an interesting noodle place.  We were also specifically looking for an udon restaurant as apparently that’s also one of Kyoto’s specialties.

Okonomiyaki Kinoya 花の屋- Kyoto, Japan

Our first dinner in Kyoto was something I very much anticipated.  It was Okonomiyaki お好み焼!!  If you don’t know what okonomiyaki is, click here.

Okonomiyaki Kinoya 花の屋 was located directly across from our hotel “Super Hotel” (which was a really good hotel by the way).  The prices seemed reasonable and it looked authentic so we decided on this one.  There’s actually another okonomiyaki restaurant right beside it but one of the magazine in the hotel recommended this one.

I didn’t take this picture.

(The picture above is from Kyoto Visitors blog.  Click on image to enlarge)

Again, they had the realistic plastic models on display.

It was a pretty small place as you can see, so as you can imagine, it got smoky pretty quickly.  The fact that all Japanese people smoked did not help either.  Funny thing though, we think we had gotten used to the smoke.  Or maybe the Japanese just makes their smoke not as nasty smelling??

Random Eats – Kyoto

Honestly, while in Japan, I never went into a meal or ate anything because I was hungry.  It was more because I HAD to eat it because I’m IN FREAKIN’ JAPAN.  It may be a while before I come back so I needed to eat everything I wanted to eat.

Which will explain the insane amount of food pictures I took.  It would be too much of a hassle to do separate posts on each thing so I’ve decided that, for some of them, they’ll be by day.

Before we headed off to Kyoto, we found a little cafe just across from our Shin-Osaka hotel.  After taking a look at their menu outside, we decided to have breakfast here.

Again I must reiterate- Japanese coffee is damn good.

Anyways for my breakfast I chose the Egg & Cheese toast.  It came with a salad of sorts.

Japanese bread is notorious for being soft, fluffy, chewy, and this was no different.  It was thickly sliced and topped with chunky scrambled eggs, ketchup, and cheese.  It was simple and so good.  I’ll probably try to make this at home.