Kyoto: Downtown

After our two sightseeing excursions, we went to the hotel in downtown Kyoto.  We stayed at the Ark Hotel and the accommodations were nice.  A small room with a desk, closet and two small double beds.  We were on the seventh floor and had a decent view.

Our tour guide offered a walking tour.  The idea was he would walk us out to the Gion area and if we saw a restaurant along the way, we could drop out. We met outside at 6pm.  Dan and I walked the hour out to Gion without seeing anything we were dying to try.  I was completely clueless as to where we were, but Dan was confident. I was beyond impressed when he did, in fact, lead us unerringly through the 25 turns back to the hotel.  We found a little Okonomiaki restaurant which ended up being even more delicious than I expected.

We did not get back to the hotel till nearly 10pm and I was pooped!

Our view from the hotel.

I was surprised how crowded the streets were.

It was quite pretty.  And really nice for being in a big city.

I wanted to show the awesome lanterns lining the street, but this really does it no justice.  

We did stop in this shop, but it was a bit too exotic of me.  I like my chocolate pretty pure.

The little restaurant we ate at.

Hiroshima and Kyoto style Okonomiyakis on the griddle.  

Iknow, it doesn't LOOK good, but it was delicious!  We shared them and both were tasty.

This is for my Dad!

Kyoto: Sanjusangen-do Temple

The Sanjusan-do Temple was our second stop on Saturday.  Sadly, no photos were permitted inside so I can't show you what it is most famous for.  The temple is gi-normous and took a good 15 minutes to circle inside.  There ate 1001 wooden statues of goddess of Mercy.  I was less impressed with them because they are identical- no creativity at all there.  However, the sheer number is rather impressive. Plus there were other statues depicting buddha and those were all very different and fun to see.

The grounds around the temple were lovely and fun to stroll around.

Rats, I just realized these first photos are from the Torii Inari Shrine.  Meh.

Too much trouble to move it to the other post, so yeah, this belonged with the pari Shrine pictures.

As does this.  I thought this was funny- traditional kimono-wearing couple taking selfies.

I love that the bathroom felt the need to give specific directions on how to use it!

Okay, on to the pretty temple grounds....

It was really cool to see so many people in kimonos. And cute to see them taking pictures of each other.

This is the short end of the temple, and looks much smaller from here.

Dan, hamming it up in front of the.... rock.

Pretty shrine.

The ceremonial bell.

This was a shrine dedicated to babies that cry in the middle of the night.

Kyoto: Fushimi Inari Shrine

For his birthday this year I decided to do something I knew Dan would like.  I told him we could sign up for the 2 day Kyoto trip, just us- no kids.  I found a marvelous friend who would come stay with the kids, and cleaned up the house so she wouldn't know I am as much of a slob as I really am, and I  got things together so we could go.

We left at 7am Saturday morning and sat on the bus for 6 hours.  Yippee.  Our first stop was the Fushimi Inari Shrine.  I love the Inari shrines!  I love the thousand torii gates; I think they are so fantastic!  This one was quite crowded.  Apparently it is the Head Shrine of more than 40,000 Inari shrines in Japan and is one of the oldest shrines in Kyoto. It enshrines the god of good business, so folks who want good business fortune come here. Oh, and if you have ever seen the movie "Memory of a Geisha", parts of that were filmed at this shrine.  It was pretty cool, even if it was crowded.

One of the rest stops had a bakery and I tried some things.  This was not a winner.  There was corn hiding in my bun!

There were some odd things in the rest stop walking area.  Was this a sculpture?  An exercise structure? A comedic tool?

Sigh.  I just love the architecture!

So pretty!

The beginning of the 1000+ torii gates.

I loved that there were so many ladies in kimonos out that day.

Perplexing, but cool.

My "we were there" picture.

Have I mentioned how much I love Japan and how beautiful it is?!

And this makes my heart go pitter-pat!

We had to stop and wait for these guys to get their photo taken, and we huddled just out of their camera's shot.

I thought this was too cute.

At the end were lots of little shrin-ey things.  Very cool to see.

But with the sun and trees, it made for dreadful lighting for photos of us.

But we tried!

My little Birthday Girl

 Someone had a birthday.  And she milked it for all she could.    Except she was SO wishy-washy!  She couldn't decide what she wanted to have for dinner and she couldn't decide what kind of cake she wanted.  Thank goodness she was confident she wanted cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and she wanted me to come and have lunch with her at school!

All ready for her first day of school as a 7 year old!

At the cafeteria.  Delaney's lunch overlaps with Rylee's so I got to hang out with both of them and their classes for lunch. 

Enjoying the gift opening. 

She was thrilled to get a stuffed peacock.  I don't know why, but she wanted one! 

Marian made the best card ever, so I had to post it.  This is the front. 

And the back. 

And the very clever inside. 

Marian also made her a unicorn, since apparently Rylee said she wanted one. 

Okay, this is a bit backwards....

Here we are at dinner.  Rylee finally decided she wanted to go to JD's restaurant.  I thought that was odd and asked several times.  She assured me that she did want to go there.  And then we got there and she realized she meant to say she wanted to go to Crossroads.  It ruined everything. 

Thank goodness she had an awesome Dragon cake! 

It was delicious.

One Full Tummy, AKA Yakiniku

 I finally made it out to eat Yakiniku.  Dan has been once or twice before and the price had kept me content to live without it.  But Dan had a work party Thursday night and I went because I liked the Marine who was leaving.  I found the dinner to be underwhelming.  If it hadn't been $30, per person, I may have been more enthused, but alas, for $60, I was kind of hoping for ....I don't know what, but definitely more.  I didn't even get any leftovers.

So you sit at a table with these every other seat.  They bring large (and small) platters of raw meat and you cook what you want, how you want. There were a few bowls with raw veggies, but I have no idea how you'd cook it tastily on a grill.  Most of what I had was delicious, but I played it safe and only ate what I recognized.

You could eat it with rice, and they had lettuce leaves you could wrap it in.  But it definitely was a meat-heavy meal.  Which, I suppose is why it is so popular with the Marines. 

That is a little bowl of ice cream, amidst the debris of our food orgy. The ice cream was delicious.  Most of what I ate was good, but I'm not a big meat-eater, so it really was wasted on me.  And, I didn't get any leftovers!