We stayed at the Kyoto Miyako Westin hotel. We had breakfast included in our room package. Generally, they like you to go down to the buffet, but generally will let you get a continental breakfast for no additional charge. We like eating breakfast in our room, especially if we have a nice view or a balcony. We had a balcony in this room.
You generally get to pick the breakfast breads you want, and on the second day there Doreen picked Toast.
We got a toaster:
which is nice, because as one of my cousins pointed out - toast has a very short shelf life. (unless you are a Brit, in which has you have a specially designed toast holder which makes sure that the toast is cold and stale in a short a time as possible) But the coffee was good, the fruit was good, and we enjoyed not having to get dressed up for breakfast.
Which you can see here:
Kyoto has a great market street that sells many different types of food.
The Japanese are crazy about pickles (fermented food). As am I! You can see barrels of different sorts of vegetables packed in brine:
The all had little samples in front of the shops, and they were all quite delicious.
Japan is also crazy about rice. Here is a store that sells nothing but rice:
and more smoked fish. These prices are usually per 10g, so this fish would be about ¥525/100g or about $23/lb. Not too bad, I suppose, for smoked fish.
And these are Bonito Flakes. This is the new darling food of modern cuisine. You sprinkle these on something hot (say, freshly boiled potatoes) and the whither and dance as if they are alive, and add an interesting, tuna flavor.
More fish. Those little guys are about $77/lb. Now that is not cheap.
There is a famous knife store in the market called Aritsugu - you can see it here. The store was pretty small, and the salespeople were busy. The knives were not tremendously expensive (under $200 for most of them) and were all low-carbon (soft and rustable) steel. They looked pretty cool. But we didn't buy any.
We did eat (well, I ate) octopus on a stick. This reminds me of a similar treat that I had frequently in Singapore. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure there is a photo somewhere of my sister-in-law Laurie eating one of these.
They are delicious. But I always feel bad when I eat octopus. They are very intelligent creatures.
Roof details on one of the many shrines in Kyoto:
This was inside one of the shrines:
another shrine:
We stopped by this shrine as well. It claims to be (and I have no reason to doubt it) that it is the longest free-standing wooden building in the world.
It houses 1001 Buddhas. They don't allow you take photos, but you can see them here.
(I didn't take that photo. They have signs ever 10' warning you not to take photos, and saying that they will inspect your camera when you leave)
Here we are in front of the longest free-standing wooden building in the world.
From there, we hopped on the bullet train and skedaddled back to Tokyo.
This is the view from our new hotel:
You generally get to pick the breakfast breads you want, and on the second day there Doreen picked Toast.
We got a toaster:
which is nice, because as one of my cousins pointed out - toast has a very short shelf life. (unless you are a Brit, in which has you have a specially designed toast holder which makes sure that the toast is cold and stale in a short a time as possible) But the coffee was good, the fruit was good, and we enjoyed not having to get dressed up for breakfast.
Which you can see here:
Kyoto has a great market street that sells many different types of food.
The Japanese are crazy about pickles (fermented food). As am I! You can see barrels of different sorts of vegetables packed in brine:
The all had little samples in front of the shops, and they were all quite delicious.
Japan is also crazy about rice. Here is a store that sells nothing but rice:
and more smoked fish. These prices are usually per 10g, so this fish would be about ¥525/100g or about $23/lb. Not too bad, I suppose, for smoked fish.
And these are Bonito Flakes. This is the new darling food of modern cuisine. You sprinkle these on something hot (say, freshly boiled potatoes) and the whither and dance as if they are alive, and add an interesting, tuna flavor.
More fish. Those little guys are about $77/lb. Now that is not cheap.
There is a famous knife store in the market called Aritsugu - you can see it here. The store was pretty small, and the salespeople were busy. The knives were not tremendously expensive (under $200 for most of them) and were all low-carbon (soft and rustable) steel. They looked pretty cool. But we didn't buy any.
We did eat (well, I ate) octopus on a stick. This reminds me of a similar treat that I had frequently in Singapore. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure there is a photo somewhere of my sister-in-law Laurie eating one of these.
They are delicious. But I always feel bad when I eat octopus. They are very intelligent creatures.
Roof details on one of the many shrines in Kyoto:
This was inside one of the shrines:
another shrine:
We stopped by this shrine as well. It claims to be (and I have no reason to doubt it) that it is the longest free-standing wooden building in the world.
It houses 1001 Buddhas. They don't allow you take photos, but you can see them here.
Here we are in front of the longest free-standing wooden building in the world.
From there, we hopped on the bullet train and skedaddled back to Tokyo.
This is the view from our new hotel:
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