Youkoso. Jay and I have jet-setted off to Japan and we're so excited about this trip. Jay lived in Japan for 10 months when he did a school-exchange trip here 10 years ago and has been itching to return ever since. I've heard so many fun and quirky stories about it from Jay and have been just as eager to visit and experience it all for myself.
Our first stop was Kyoto, considered the cultural heart of Japan. Renowned for its vast amounts of temples, gardens, shrines, and (if you're lucky enough to see them) geisha, this was a wonderfully fitting and enriching introduction to Japan.
We stayed at a
ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn.
The pictures and accompanying captions below detail what an incredibly unique and memorable stay it was.
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| The front of our ryokan, Kikokuso Lodging |
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| Our room, complete with tatami-mat flooring, futon, shoji screens... |
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| ...and a beautiful sitting area overlooking a Japanese garden below. |
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| Ready for our traditional Japanese breakfast... |
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| ...including rice, tofu, egg, miso soup, green tea and a variety of pickled vegetables. Not for the faint-hearted. |
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Jay and I wearing our yukata (casual summer kimono)
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| At the end of the day we bathed the traditional Japanese way. The bathing room contained a shower area where we cleansed ourselves with soap, rinsed ourselves off, and then hopped into the bath pictured above. It was the perfect way to wind down after each arduous day of walking around and exploring Kyoto. |
Staying at the
ryokan was a truly special experience, and one which I highly recommend to anyone visiting Kyoto with the opportunity to do so.
Keen to get a true 'taste' of Kyoto, we visited the four hundred year-old
Nishiki Market on our first day there. It's a bustling hub selling many of Kyoto's specialties, including - but certainly not limited to - vegetables, pickles, dried fish and a ridiculous variety of tofu (including tofu donuts. Before you ask, yes, they were delicious).
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| Nishiki Market |
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| An assortment of vegetables commonly used in Japanese cuisine. Note that they are all individually packaged, including the carrots. |
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| Tsukemono, pickled vegetables |
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| Mochi, glutenised rice balls dipped in a sweet paste. Positively delicious. |
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| Bonito fish, which is commonly shaved and served on top of vegetables or rice. |
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| Fishy fish |
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| More fishy fish |
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| So much tea |
With this being my first visit to Japan, and my first proper introduction to Japanese culture, I've obviously learnt a lot over my initial few days here. I'll now share some of my new-found pieces of wisdom with you:
1. Shoes. You have to change them, a lot. And it's not just about taking them off when you enter a house (or in our case, a
ryokan). Once inside, there will be a pair of slippers you put on to walk around the residence in. If there are tatami mats in a room, you will have to take off the slippers before entering it*. And in some cases, there will be another pair of slippers you will have to change into when entering a bathroom. So far the most amount of shoe/slipper changes in one location have happened at a temple we visited: there were 4.
2. Vending machines. You can buy warm drinks from them. I don't mean ones where you buy a cup, put it onto a tray, and hot liquid pours into it; I've seen those ones often enough. The ones I'm talking about here look like you're purchasing an ordinary plastic bottle of drink. Except that when you open it, steam comes out of it because it actually contains a heated beverage. Wowzas.
3. Free tastings are commonly offered in food stores. For example, in the image pictured below, green tea was offered to prospective customers upon entry to the shop. And it wasn't just a token small portion that would otherwise leave you craving for more. Instead, it was a proper, real-world serving of tea. But it didn't finish there. Once inside the store, tastings were available for most of the varieties of sweets sold there. As with the green tea tastings, these were generous sized servings, to the point that we left the store quite full. So technically, if you wanted to be super stingy, you could just visit a few shops and fill yourself up on the variety of tastings in them. I'm still getting over how amazing this is.
4. Traffic light sounds. Some chirp like birds when they turn green.
5. Toilets. Buttons like the ones pictured below are on the sides of some toilets. I haven't been game enough to press any of them yet, but who knows what will happen over my next couple of weeks here.
There's just so much to say about Kyoto that I couldn't possibly fit it all into one blog without overwhelming you. So stay tuned to hear about more of our Kyotan adventures.
Arigato gozaimasu.
* confession: I've forgotten to do so at times
