Time Warp in Kyoto - Installment the Third

Well, I've been wanting to get this series wrapped up, and this post will do it. I'm going to be telling you a little bit of what we did in Kyoto, but the focus will be the food. I'll try to squeeze a few formal introductions into the post too, so you can start feeling as if you know these people. As is only proper, we're going to start off with Monday's breakfast. 

The morning has already been an adventure. The shower here at the inn is designed for rinsing off before bathing. The bathroom contains a huge sunken tub, which is covered most of the time, and two shower heads hanging on the wall. That's it. The other essentials that you'd expect to find in a bathroom are elsewhere. But that doesn't affect my shower, and now I'm done with my morning preparations and ready for breakfast. The ladies at the inn actually make us our breakfast, and serve it to us on a low table. I sit down across from Misty. She's the lady who picked us up from the airport last night, arranged for the bus from Osaka to Kyoto, and has opened her house up for us to live in. Next to me, on my right, is Ms. I, who I met two weeks ago at blaze. Her friend, Ms. A, sits across from her, completing our quartet. The lovely innkeeper comes in with our breakfast - fruit and yogurt, toast and jam, and an egg poached in a tomato - and we all "fall to."  

Breakfast conquered, we file outside and mount our bicycles. We're off to the Imperial palace to reserve spots for the different English tours we'll be taking, and then we are off again to the Nishijin Textile Center to see a kimono fashion show and drool over the beautiful clothes. Passing school children on the sometimes-narrow sidewalks sure gives one an appetite. This is a replica of what I had for lunch. Having plastic replicas of the menu for customers to look at is a common practice here in Japan, and very useful for us gaijen (foreigners). 

Tuesday dawns a little cloudy, and we place umbrellas and  raincoats in our bicycles' baskets. It's quite a bike to the  station, where we board a train to take us to the Imperial  Villa. We leave with visions of bridges and tea houses still in our  heads, and enter a train bound toward Nara, home of incorrigible  deer and the Todaji Temple. We eat lunch on the train, a variety of things  bought at the station: rice wrapped in fried tofu, assorted onigiri (rice balls), and sushi.  Back in Kyoto we've still a bit more sightseeing to do, but it's all worth it when we sit down to an entertaining night at Zoronpa, where the yakisoba and okonomiyaki is cooked at the bar and then brought to our own personal stovetop to keep it warm while we eat. 

Tomorrow, Wednesday, we will travel halfway  across Kyoto on bicycles in search of recommended shops; we'll  see the five story pagoda temple called Toji, and the extravagant Kinkakuji (golden temple); however, the most wonderful event of all will be when we make a complicated journey by shinkazen (bullet train) to our new home, Hikari.