Out of all the days to go on strike, Finnair decided that tomorrow’s a great day. Fortunately, they managed to put us on one of British Airway’s flights (even though this was something we originally wanted to avoid). With a bit of luck both me and my luggage will reach the destination anyway. China, here I come!
Category Archives: Travels
Kaiseki dinner in Kyoto
Our landlord highly recommended that we eat a kaiseki dinner during our stay in Japan. Kaiseki, or Kaiseki-ryori is a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner that’s usually quite expensive. However, Mariko-san knew of a place that serves good and affordable kaiseki for ¥5000. Of course, we set out to find this restaurant called “Otaya” but following her hand-drawn map proved to be harder than we thought when it’s dark outside. Luckily for us, we ran into a nice Japanese couple and asked them for help. They didn’t just point us in the right direction but actually took their time to walk us to the restaurant! And when we reached our destination they even bowed and thanked us. I wish people at home would be this kind and caring.
The funny thing is, as we were walking towards the restaurant, my husband said to me, “It would be pretty funny if we end up at the same restaurant we tried our first day in Kyoto”. And yes, this was the exact same restaurant. On our first visit we weren’t sure on how to operate the restaurant’s sliding doors so when we finally stepped into the restaurant, all the guests, waitress and chef looked at us curiously. That day they were fully booked and the same thing happened now but this time we made sure to make a reservation for another night. When we were back out on the street, we heard someone calling “Martin, Nicole!” and it was Mariko-san! She kindly offered to take us to another great restaurant nearby and hungry as we were, we accepted. The place she took us to was amazing! We got a table on the second floor with a view over the small river right outside the house. The service was excellent and the food very good.
Two days later, we returned to Otaya for the kaiseki dinner. We ordered nihonshu to drink and of course the kaiseki. We had prepared ourselves by just eating a light lunch but I still had trouble eating everything. My favourite courses were the pumpkin (I love pumpkin) and the vegetables (never have I tasted so perfectly cooked vegetables).
OTAYA: http://otaya-kyoto.com/
1) Fig and cheese with miso dressing
2) Soup with fish and lime
3) Sashimi (tuna and some white fish I don’t remember). The purple flower petals were supposed to be put in the soy sauce together with the wasabi
4) Grilled mackerel with chestnuts, ginkgo seeds and lime
5) 20 different vegetable with dipping sauce
6) Mashed pumpkin “dumpling” in a thick sauce
7) Sushi and miso soup
8) Crème brûlée
When we were about to leave the restaurant, the waitress congratulated us on getting married and gave us two beautiful coasters she’d made. I think it’s wonderful how a complete stranger goes out of her way to make you happy. A little kindness really goes a long way :)
Alice in Wonderland restaurant in Tokyo
When it comes to weird themed restaurants, Tokyo is the place to be. How about a Ninja restaurant? Or perhaps you’d like to dine in a freaky prison mental hospital? Or why not bring out your inner fisherman and catch your dinner, at the restaurant? Personally, I’ve got a weak spot for Alice in Wonderland so we decided to pay a visit to one (Shinjuku) of the (I think it’s) 3 Alice themed restaurants in Tokyo. Just finding the place was a challenge in itself but as always, I asked a nice woman if she could help me. At first I tried asking if she knew of the Alice in Wonderland restaurant but she didn’t seem to understand much of what I said. Instead I tried my best Japangrish, that is to say, speak English with the sounds used in the Japanese alphabet. I was pretty pleased with myself when I nailed the pronunciation of “Arisu in Wondarando” and she immediately understood what we were looking for. She was really surprised to hear that there was such a restaurant nearby and asked me several of times if she had heard me correctly. Meanwhile we were talking, some of her friends showed up and assisted in the search for the elusive restaurant. After much laughter and searching on their phones, they gave us directions to the basement floor in a nearby house. Judging from their reaction, I wouldn’t be surprised if we just found the restaurant some more visitors.
We walked all the way down to the basement but where was the restaurant? Of course it was hidden under the stair behind a sliding door that looked like a book. Inside the restaurant, the tiniest little waitress, dressed up as Alice, lead us to our table. She then heaved up a large book on the table containing the menu and also kindly told us about the special recommendations. We ordered drinks from the special recommendations menu and the rest from the regular menu.
Everything on the menu had names inspired by Alice in Wonderland, like Mad Hatter or Caterpillars and Alice of course. We ordered bread with avocado/scrimp dip and a caterpillar (avocado) on rice that also came with some sliced tuna + two different desserts. The portions were quite small and perhaps a bit on the expensive side but very tasty. All in all, this restaurant was a great experience! If only we had found it earlier, we would have stayed longer (I think they close at 23).
Website: http://www.alice-restaurant.com/ehon/
The menu
Avocado caterpillar!
Just do as the note tells you
The tiniest and cutest waitress there is
Loving the “Eat me!” written in chocolate
Isn’t this table adorable?
Tokyo Disney Sea
Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always wanted to go to Disneyland but never had the chance until now. Before the we left for Japan, I did some googling and as it turned out, there are not one but two Disneylands in Tokyo! One ordinary Disneyland and one called Tokyo Disney Sea. The latter was supposedly centered around water with areas inspired by steampunk and Jules Verne. Steampunk and Disney all at once, could it get any better?
The Mediterranean harbour, with volcano and all.
You sure you’re still in Tokyo? (American waterfront)
We were warned beforehand that there probably would be a lot of people at the park so we decided to go there on a Tuesday. This particular Tuesday, the weather gods had decided that clouds + drizzle was a good idea. I think both the fact that it was a weekday and the weather wasn’t perfect contributed to keeping the number of visitors low. However, drizzle in Tokyo when it’s around 25 degrees means that the water dries pretty much instantly so for us, it was a non issue.
Was Tokyo Disney Sea as amazing as I imagined it to be? Both yes and no, I’d say. First of all,the scenery was amazing! Never in my wildest dream could I imagine that they would build a freakin’ volcano or recreate Venice with gondolas and all. I swear, Agrabah (yeah, they’ve built that as well) even smelled like it hosted camels!
Venice! No wait, still in Tokyo.
“Why not build a temple while we’re at it?” Here I am, in the Indiana Jones part of the park.
Merry-go-round in camel-smelling Agrabah at night.
Scenery-wise, I really liked the steampunk inspired areas, Port Discovery and Mysterious Island.
Photo taken on our way to the restaurant in Port Discovery.
The cutest steampunk fish boat :D
The Mysterious Island
The Mysterious Island and the volcano Prometheus.
Secondly, I was expecting more roller coaster rides that would make me scream of joy and excitement. There were definitely fewer rides than I expected and they focused more on being visually appealing than speed. It wasn’t bad, just not what I was expecting. My favourite ride was, without a doubt, Tower of Terror. Since all the storytelling and everything was in Japanese and I understood like 10%, I was constantly surprised. I don’t want to spoil the experience for anyone so I won’t say anything more other than it was pretty darn epic.
Many of the rides were made for small kids which became painfully apparent when we squeezed us into a small roller coaster in “the little mermaid” area. We made it but it was a close call for my husband. :)
This is the entrance to the little mermaid lagoon.
Inside the mermaid lagoon (or rather, cave).
There are a couple of restaurants serving Japanese food aimed for families so I wouldn’t say that the menu was super exciting. But I love ebi tempura (fried scrimp) so I was happy anyway.
Mmm… Bread (!!), fried scrimp, seafood salad, cake and tea
Before going home, we went for one last “ride” that was inside the Titanic, namely “Turtle Talk”. The audience sat down in a large room, much like a cinema where the animated turtle from Finding Nemo showed up. The cool thing was that the turtle was actually talking to the audience in real-time. As usual, I understood like 10-20% of what everybody was saying but still I enjoyed it. Only problem was that I was a bit afraid that the turtle would decide to talk to the only two foreigners in the audience, but we got away with just watching *phew*.
“Titanic” at night, quite a view.
Kinkaku-ji and Fushimi Inari Taisha
The Golden Pavilion, or Kinkaku-ji as it’s commonly known as, is a Zen Buddhist temple located in the northern part of Kyoto. Visiting Kyoto without seeing Kinkaku-ji is like going to the Louvre and not be bothered to see Mona Lisa. So of course, we had to see what all the fuss what about!
We got there by taking a JR train (forgot which line) to Enmachi Station and then a taxi to the temple. If you’re not on a tight budget, I can very much recommend grabbing a taxi. It cost us around ¥1000 one way but because there is pretty much no traffic, you’ll reach your destination in no time. The only downside is that taxi drivers speak almost no English at all. If you don’t speak a word of Japanese, I recommend writing down the address on a piece of paper and/or bring a map with you.
At the temple grounds there were a special exhibition showing the high priest’s house. It was in Japanese only and the cashier seemed very concerned that we wouldn’t enjoy it and told us several times that English wasn’t available. We assured him that it was fine and bought our tickets. Just as we had taken off our shoes and put them in a plastic bag (yes, you carry your shoes with you, in a bag), another ‘museum attendant’ came up to us with some papers. They weren’t official or anything, he said, but they were in English and explained the layout of the house, what rooms had been used for what etc. Then he did his best to give us a quick guided tour. It’s things like this that I love about the Japanese. We’ve met so many lovely and friendly people who really go out of their way to help two slightly confused foreigners.
The special exhibition was very nice even though we didn’t really understand everything. The best thing about it could actually be the calm atmosphere that surrounded the house. Almost everyone went straight for the Kinkaku-ji, making it a bit crowded but at the house we were just a handful of people. Also the stone garden surrounding the house was memorable.
Kinkaku-ji itself was very beautiful but I have to say that I think the crowd of people was a little bit disturbing. I would probably have enjoyed it more if we could’ve just sat down on a bench contemplating the view of the garden like we did at the Tenryu temple. In summary, I’d say that the Kinkaku-ji was well worth the visit but I would recommend visiting early in the morning.
Outside the temple grounds, there’s a café selling the wonderful green tea ice-cream that I miss soooo much. I just had to take a picture of the plastic food they got on display. That green tea/vanilla ice-cream is to die for, yum yum!
After the Kinkaku-ji, we took a taxi back to Enmachi Station and took the train back to Kyoto station, switched to the train for Nara and got off at the Fushimi Inari Taisha, known for it’s “Thousand Torii Gates”.
We didn’t know much about the shrine when we started climbing the stairs and like with most temples/shrines we visited, I severely underestimated this one as well. I never thought that it would be such a long walk with stairs pretty much all the way. Luckily, there are several vending machines on the way (even on mountains they’ve got vending machines!!). We even reached the wonderful vantage-point with a café just before closing time. Nothing beats enjoying the sweet taste of a soy-bean ice-cream and the view of Kyoto in sunlight after a long walk. Filled with new energy we continued our walk and finally reached the top. It was an amazing feeling but to be honest, I was expecting more of a view from the top. The coolest thing was that the sun had started to go down and the lanterns were lighting up. Unfortunately, that also meant “mosquito time”! With that said, we hurried down the mountain. We almost got lost on our way down but it wasn’t that serious since we turned back before completely walking down the mountain on the wrong side. Apparently quite a few people hike the mountain even in the evening so we weren’t alone. After walking past a house that looked very much like a pub(!?) we met a couple of hikers chanting their mantra “Give us a beer, Give us a beer” while climbing the stairs. I guess what we saw earlier really was a pub :)
I didn’t count but I don’t think “a thousand” is an exaggeration when it comes to the torii gates.
A Kitsune (Fox) statue. Foxes are very common at Inari Shrines.
Back were we started! As you can see, it’s rather dark outside
Yuki Clothing 