day 2 of kyoto was a whirlwind. we ate some incredible tempura at one of the best tempura restaurants in japan, went to a kaleidoscope museum, took a plum wine making class, walked through nishiki market, visited a flower themed cafe, walked through gion (i took no photos here, will get to that), ate delicious yakitori, and went to our friend’s favorite bar.

it was a long and satisfying day. probably the most fun day of the trip. and theres a lot to cover!

getting there

i got kind of a late start today, so i left late, after the rest of the group did, and met up with them at their first destination. because of this, i took a different route than them, heading directly to the closest station rather than meeting up at kyoto station again. i got some pictures along my walk.

i caught up with the group just before our first destination, a tempura restaurant in kyoto.

tempura endo yasaka

the first thing we did was get tempura at a very famous restaurant called tempura endo yasaka. this restaurant has been around for over 100 years, and it really changed what tempura actually is in my brain. every time i have ever had tempura before this, it has been a side dish or a single piece included in a main dish. here, tempura is the whole meal. and it was so good. they had types of tempura i had never had before, and like almost every other restaurant i have been to in this country, you sit directly in front of the chef while he makes it. you can watch him make the food right in front of you. it was great. he even spoke a little english too.

all the tempura i have ever had before this has been quite fried. but the way this is prepared, its covered in batter and put in the oil just long enough for the batter to harden and then removed, leaving the item inside pretty uncooked. it was a very different taste from the types of tempura i have had before.

the course also came with salt, matcha salt, pickled radish, and tentsuyu, which is a blend of soy sauce, mirin, and dashi (japanese soup stock). the chef would advise with each piece which seasoning to put on it.

i also ordered a glass of rosé, and it was excellent. i meant to get a photo of the menu so i could remember what kind of rosé it was, but i forgot to do so.

all in all, this is one of the best meals i have ever had. it was unique, interesting, and of course 10/10 delicious. my favorite was the red snapper tempura.

kaleidoscope museum

our next stop was something i never would have found if i had been here alone. a kaleidoscope museum right next to our third destination.

photos were not allowed inside, but they did have one display kaleidoscope set up to put your camera up to:

this place was much more interesting than it might sound. they had types of kaleidoscopes i didn’t know existed. there were some made from flowers, there were some with a glass orb on the end that gave a kaleidoscopic effect to whatever you looked at, and there were some that i think were quite old. very cool experience. it isn’t very large, it is about a 20 or 30 minute experience.

interlude: drugs

our next stop was a couple minute walk from the museum. but we still had some time to kill. i asked tsukasa-sama if there was a pharmacy nearby.

as i have been saying in previous posts, my feet have been killing me during this trip. i thought i could just go buy some aleve/advil/japanese equivalent at a convenience store like you could in the usa, but that is not the case in japan. turns out you have to go to a pharmacy to get even over the counter stuff, and get a pharmacist to sell it to you. that is kind of difficult to orchestrate when you don’t fluently speak the language. a couple times i have considered going to one and trying to communicate in broken japanese, but i feel like the purchase of substances is perhaps one of the worst possible times for a communication mistake, so i have just avoided it.

thankfully, this was the perfect opportunity to address it, as i had a japanese speaking native here with me to help. we found a nearby pharmacy and asked the pharmacist for assistance, and she gave me a drug i hadn’t heard of, loxoprofen. i did some googling and found that its allegedly “stronger ibuprofen” and rolled with it.

as i am writing this on april 8th and have tried this drug a couple times, i can report that it is not great. i was told to absolutely never take more than 2 in a 24 hour period, and i have stuck to that. i overdosed on naproxen (aleve) one time and it was absolute hell, so i am very careful to never make that happen again. i would say it feels like half the effectiveness i would get out of taking an aleve. but even though it doesn’t just magically solve my issues, it does help and i am deeply appreciative of that.

making plum wine (sort of)

our next stop was a short class on making plum wine. the instructor of the class did not speak english, so we were very thankful to have tsukasa-sama to translate.

the class had several options. making actual wine takes 30 days, and we didn’t want to explain to the japanese equivalent of the tsa or united states customs that we were making alcohol in our bags, so we went with a different option - syrup. this was a much smaller container than the wine bottle would have been, and only takes 7 days to make. so we will be done before leaving japan and won’t have to explain ourselves to airport security.

we sampled a ton of different sugars and types of plum syrup, and i ultimately decided on organic nanko plums with honey as the sweetener. i actually decided on beet sugar sweetener, but i think they misheard me or there was a translation issue or something, because i ended up with honey. which is fine, because that would have been my second choice anyway.

as seen in the above pictures, the final result is this small sealed cup with a single plum and the sweetener inside. i am supposed to shake it around once a day for a week and then it will be good to use. as my traveling companions will have moved on to tokyo, and enjoying their last night in the country when our syrups are done, we plan to have a video call cocktail party in a week.

nishiki market

after we finished the plum wine class, we took a stroll through nishiki market, also known as “kyoto’s kitchen.”

this is a very very very tightly packed street full of food stalls. they had all sorts of stuff. tiny octopi with a quail egg stuffed inside that get cooked via blowtorch when you buy them, the world’s tiniest beer cans, sea urchin, geoduck, and all manner of “on-a-stick” foods. the idea is to walk from stall to stall enjoying local cuisine. i was still super full on tempura, so i just enjoyed the world’s tiniest beer instead.

i bet whoever manufactures the wooden skewers used here is making a fortune. had i come here alone, i likely would have walked up and down this place, getting small bites at 30 different places and called that lunch. while that would have been fun, i definitely preferred the tempura. i will definitely come eat food here next time i am in kyoto, though. and there for sure will be a next time.

owls

while walking around the area on the other end of nishiki market, we saw a sign for a place you could go pet a bunch of owls. we of course had to stop by and check it out.

this was a fun experience, and really highlights one of my favorite things about japan. you can just turn down a random alley side street and have a super memorable and unique experience, easily. this isn’t me having insane luck or going out of my way to find these cool spots. tsukasa-sama didn’t plan this one either. we just stumbled into it. there is a charm and uniqueness about the big cities in japan that gives even just walking down a street a sense of adventure. you actually never know what you are going to find. so many incredible gems are up a tiny staircase behind an unassuming door in an alleyway. it is really a magical thing.

after hanging out with the owls, we kept walking and i found a card store. i knew what i would be able to find here and had to go in just to get a picture of it.

i knew they’d be valuable one day! this also made me realize these pokemon i know and love have totally different names in japanese (of course they would). blastoise is called “kamekkusu” or “kamex” and charizard is called “rizaadon” or “lizardon”. this made me google my favorite pokemon, ditto and learn his name in japanese is “metamon”.

i also learned from looking at these cards that not all pokemon have different names in japanese. i can read katakana (one of the 3 “alphabets” in japanese, used for words taken from other languages, and also for names), so i can read these pokemon card names. i saw that omastar is called “omasuta” (omastar) and kabuto is called kabuto. so it seems only some got localized names. i gotta say, if they were called lizardon and kamex when i was a kid, it probably wouldn’t have been as cool. so good move, pokemon.

flower cafe

tsukasa-sama took us to a great spot for a break, shockingly close to the incredibly tourist-packed streets on and around the market. a flower themed cafe. japan has tons of themed cafes, and this is somehow the first one i have been to, if you don’t include the kirby themed one i took pictures of but couldn’t eat at a couple weeks ago.

this was a great place to take a break. it was quiet and peaceful. a small bluetooth speaker in the corner was playing awesome music. i shazam-ed one song and identified this song, which is just going in the playlist forever now.

i don’t drink coffee, so i just got a royal milk tea ice cream and a glass of water. the ice cream was great!

busy streets

we walked down a very busy street to get to our next destination, gion, the geisha district of kyoto. we also stopped in the nintendo store, which was of course extremely busy. i was going to buy something, but there was a 30 minute line to check out, so i changed my mind.

i would say this about japan in general, but especially kyoto - it is a claustrophobe’s nightmare scenario. there are just so many people, and the streets are so narrow and tightly packed. this is amplified in kyoto because it is like the #1 tourist destination in japan, so it is the usual japanese crowds, plus 50% more people in the mix. it is really really crazy. it probably doesn’t look that way from my photos, but that is because i either don’t take photos with a ton of people in them, or i will crop them so most of the people aren’t in the shot. i wouldn’t particularly want to be photographed by a random stranger, so i try not to photograph random strangers. because i am a giant, i am pretty sure i am just accidentally in a few hundred people’s japan trip albums. i wonder if i am on any travel blogs.

gion

gion is a very famous section of tokyo, where the geisha work. i originally thought we wouldn’t be able to come here, because there have been many different news stories about the city of kyoto banning tourists from gion due to unacceptably rude behavior.

geisha are not there to be photographed. they are at work. there are a lot of misconceptions about geisha and i highly recommend this article if you want more information on them. tourists have been acting like paparazzi, engaging in extremely rude behavior. touching them, pulling their hair, taking photos of them without their permission, etc. imagine if you were walking to work or at work and someone walked up to you and started talking at you in a language you don’t know, touching your face / hair / clothes etc. they are understandably quite upset about this.

not all of gion is blocked off, just parts of it. so we walked through it. right off the bat when you first enter, there are multiple giant signs in several languages with pictures making it crystal clear that you are not allowed to take photos anywhere in gion. they are exceptionally clear about this. and there are more signs indicating this as you go. of course, i put the cap on my camera lens and took no photos as we walked through. we saw hundreds of people just blatantly disregarding this rule and taking photos anyway. we saw a couple with a selfie stick recording a video less than one foot away from a sign that says no cameras. truly disgusting behavior. i completely understand the city of kyoto being mad about this, and it really is a shame. people suck. i was talking to my friends about it and said they should just have a guy with a paintball gun shoot you in the shins if you take photos.

i really wanted to enjoy gion, but seeing the constant stream of rude tourists kind of put a bad taste in my mouth. its so so so easy to just not take a picture. i don’t understand these people. it’s like they think they are the main character or something. unbelievably rude.

outside gion

after we got to the end of the street we were on, it lets out into an open area with some pretty trees. we hung out there for 10 or 15 minutes.

this was a really peaceful little area to stop and have a break.

yakitori

we went to get dinner a tsukasa-sama’s favorite yakitori place. it was quite good, and a ton of food.

i wasn’t that hungry, but it is kind of amazing what sitting in front of delicious cooked meat can do for an appetite.

joker bar

our last stop for the night was tsukasa-sama’s favorite baR IN KYOTO, CALLED THE JOKER BAR.

this place was great. the staff spoke fluent english (one guy was from texas), and they had a ton of different kinds of lemon sour, my favorite drink. i got extremely extremely drunk here. i tried one of each kind of lemon sour (the cola and green tea ones were the best), and also got a sukekiyo, a drink they invented that has a ridiculous amount of booze and an entire red bull in it.

another awesome thing about japan, you can get wasted and just take a train home. we were an entire city away, like 50 minutes by car. but the cost to get home, including a cab from the bar to the train station, was like $9. you can’t beat that.

overall an incredible day!

reverie