25.11.18 - Kyoto & Gion

Today we explore Gion! I think this area is a bucket list item for most, if not all, people going to Kyoto. Gion is popular for it's historical streets, however because of this it also gets crazy busy. So to (try) avoid the crowds, we get out of the house shortly after 8:00am.

First stop on our way into Gion is Shirakawa Canal. And we nailed the timing. There's practically no one here! Strolling down the street, it has a peaceful old-timey feel.

Shirakawa Canal leads towards Hanamikoji-dori which was next on our list. Well...sort of. We thought Hanamikoji was a different street than it actually was - initially thinking this was the popular "instagramable" spot in Gion. Turns out it's not, although it's still popular. No pictures of this street since a lot of private homes on along this route. But it has the traditional buildings like Shinakawa Canal.

After walking Hanamikoji-dori, our mission is to find the popular street that everyone walks down in Gion. A bunch of googling and I think I find it - don't know why it's so hard to find, but no one on the Google actually says what street they take their photos. Rude. But I did get names for Sannenzaka and Ninenzaka so we head in that direction.

Following the map, we stumble upon Ninenzaka! I'm glad we found it after having some difficulty figuring out what street we wanted to actually go to, but even the streets leading up to Ninenzaka had just as much character! Just getting up there was part of the fun and experience.

Our timing was really good for walking Ninenzaka because although there were people at this hour (about 9:00am), it was so much busier when we were heading out of Gion.

Ninenzaka leads right to the next destination on our list - Kodaiji Temple. How convenient! Reading up on the bamboo forests in Kyoto, I was put off by the more popular bamboo forest over in Arashiyama and Kodaiji Temple came up in a couple different articles that they have a smaller, but quieter, bamboo "forest". Don't make my mistake though...I took us to the wrong part of Kodaiji Temple at first - the temple-temple versus the garden temple. I feel like this would be an easy mistake? No big deal. We make our way over to the "right" part of the temple for the bamboo forest walk.

The temple garden is an explosion is fall colors! So many Japanese maple changing to their red colors, so beautiful!

They do get tour buses coming in to the temple, so there may be large groups walking the garden, but we must have had perfect timing because there were very few people so we could really enjoy the peacefulness of the garden. Now for the bamboo forest photo dump! Definitely a worthwhile experience.

It's nearing lunchtime so we head for a restaurant we found earlier - Gion Tempura Ramen Kiraku. It's tucked back on a tiny alley near Yasaka Pagoda. Thank goodness for Google maps directions otherwise we'd never have found it back here. The menu is simple - matcha ramen and tempura. We ordered the classic sampler which included nine pieces of tempura: kabocha, chicken, okra, lotus, shiso, sweet potato, eggplant and baby corn. The noodles are perfect texture and the broth is dashi-based and has a lovely richness to it which I wasn't expecting. Delicious. Their iced matcha is also delicious with a very light sweetness, just enough to cut the bitter/green flavor of the matcha. The service was impeccable and the tempura was the lightest batter ever - 10/10 recommend this place!

Now to make our way to Kyoto Gyoen National Garden. Calling it a "garden" is a bit of a misnomer. There are no flowers that we noticed, just a heck of a lot of trees. It's still magnificent though. To me it's like...the Central Park of Kyoto. Inside the "garden" is the Kyoto imperial palace and state residence, both behind their respective walls. The gravel pathways are large and it seems to go on forever in every direction, and of course everything is perfectly manicured.

We make our way through the garden and head toward Daimaru department store for dinner finds. The cool thing about these big department stores - subway access to the basement food! Surprisingly we found a lot of the same food "stalls" here that were at Takashimaya, so we grabbed a few salad things that we liked yesterday, plus a few other new items to try. Dad prefers Takashimaya because Daimaru is oddly warm when walking around, but otherwise they both have very similar items and are great places to find all sorts of things.

We leave Daimaru with our food items and head back to the house. Our feet have walked more than 20,000 steps today (well, my feet at least) so we're ready for a siesta. While siesta-ing, we saw koi swimming in the river outside the house! Two different koi - one bright orange and another with white and red. Not what I would call a wild river fish. No idea where they came from, they just seemed to appear in the middle of the river. Then, as I'm typing up the journal Dad points to something in the river and I look out to see what I think is a capybara!...Right outside the window! Turns out it's more likely a nutria (never heard of this before), but dang do they look similar. And on top of that, the grey herons were flying around in front of the window giving us a show! It was quite the afternoon of animal spotting.

I'll finish this journal with a window-view picture of the swimming capybara-slash-probably-a-nutria.

Sayonara!