Kyoto Love. 🇯🇵❤️

Kyoto Love. 🇯🇵❤

My dear. This will not be the longest post as I am quite exhausted because all my emotions are on the streets of Kyoto. Oh such a lovely city! After walking only 10minutes on the streets yesterday morning, I knew that this post would name Kyoto Love! So no questions mark at all that Kyoto has been the former capital of Japan. It is still so much more traditional and thus more interesting (to me). Tokyo is a great mega city but you know similar to Hong Kong or Bangkok somehow (only somehow). But Kyoto it really Japanese. You do not see a lot of Skyscrapers but thousands of traditional Japanese style houses, cute shop-designs and many, many Geishas – wannabes and also real ones! But let us start at the beginning… After having the Tempura Dinner after my arrival at the hotel, you remember the Celestine I am staying at again, I skipped the breakfast as I was still feeling so well fed after my Ryokan experience and the dinner. So after I just had a cup of Green Sencha Tea (getting a tea junkie over here, bought already tons of tea), I chose to start my Kyoto weekend with a very famous site here in town: The Fushimi Inari Shrine in southern Kyoto. I got there with the local train where a super nice lady helped me finding my way after she heard me asking for the way to other people. I was just about to embark the train when she came to me and told me that is is not the one. She was explaining that she just listened the conversation and she did not want me to get lost. How nice, Japanese people do pay so much attention to others, incredible! So I was lucky because otherwise I would have been stranded somewhere and on top of this we also had a very nice conversation in the train. Her English was excellent (not many Japanese people do speak English very well, they understand a bit but have troubles in answering…) and we had a quite good talk about Europe and Japan. After 20minutes I needed to get off and she was really happy that I made my way in the right direction, I felt. Arriving at the Inari station everything is welcoming you in RED. You need to know that Fushimi Inari Shrine is an important Shinto shrine and known for its thousands of Red Torii Gates that you walk under into the wooded forest of the sacred Mount Inari, which stands at 233 meters and belongs to the shrine grounds. Fushimi Inari is the most important of several thousands of shrines dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice. Foxes are thought to be Inari’s messengers, resulting in many fox statues across the shrine grounds, you gonna see them in the pictures. Before you enter the ground there is like a street food market with a lot of different kinds of food specialties. So you have to pass all the delicious smells before you can see Fushimi Inari. I could not resist and had some – I do not know what kind of – sweets to eat while walking to the shrine as a to go breakfast. It tasted delicious, like a hot Mocha filled with green tea, chocolate and red bean paste (again the sweet things…). Got to Fushimi and you will see in the pictures that there were many, many other people having the same idea for this Saturday so it was massively crowded. But as you have to walk around 2 hours on top to Mount Inari people are getting less the more you get up. I found beautifully peaceful nice little shrines and took a lot of pictures of the details. It is really fascinating that the religion is a real part of the Japanese life. All the Japanese prayed and donated and they love to visit the shrines (Shinto) or temples (Buddhism). People told me that they go every week. I strolled around and enjoyed that it got warmer in Kyoto (already 17 degrees). I had a wonderful first Matcha Latte on my way up and after staying 2,5 hours in the whole ground I wanted to make my way back to the station. But then my eyes caught a lovely Cat café and since this had been on the Japanese Must Do List as well I entered the café. So cute!!! All the cats are abandoned or salvaged from cat shelters and they looked really happy and healthy. You pay a fee of 700 JPY (around 5,50 Euro) for 20minutes to have fun with the cats. Please look at the pictures. One guy sitting next to me simply took a power nap – the cat jumped on him and sat there, then after 30minutes he simply left. As the apartments are small in Japan, most people do not have pets but they love animals. So these cafes – if run correctly – are somehow an experience for the most of Japanese. I am still not clear with myself if I think it is good or not. Always feel so sorry for all the animals. But this café was alright as they are really gentle and lovely with the cats. After 20minutes I paid for another 20minutes as I suddenly noticed how much I missed my beloved Heidi. So I felt better when stroking the cats. Sat there and relaxed. Finally I left to catch the train and headed back towards Gion, the district in Kyoto where my hotel is located. Some words about Gion maybe: Real! Interesting! Cute! And I think the best area you can stay in Kyoto. Although it is not a bit like it I would compare it with Brooklyn in NYC in the Japanese way. Gion is located at the Kamo River and most famous for its geisha district. The famous story of the book THE GEISHA (you have to read it if you do not know the book – it is lovely) is playing here. Gion is filled with shops, restaurants and Ochaya (teahouses), where Geiko (Kyoto dialect for Geisha) and Maiko (geiko apprentices) entertain. Many stores still sell the real thing, Kyoto made pottery for example (OMG how to get this stuff home???) Gion also attracts with its high concentration of traditional wooden Machiya merchant houses. Due to the fact that property taxes were formerly based upon street frontage, the houses were built with narrow facades only five to six meters wide, but extend up to twenty meters in from the street, so mostly having beautiful little Japanese backyard gardens with small ponds. The streets of Gion look really lovely and very old-school somehow. In Gion you also find very good Ryokans as well. So if you come to Japan and do not have the time to go to the countryside like I did with Hakone, you can also enjoy a Ryokan experience here in Kyoto. I tried to catch the charisma of Gion with the pictures, so hope you get at least a glimpse of it. For dinner I was following a recommendation of a Teppanjaki restaurant (you remember the nice old lady, managing the Ryokan, she gave me her list of favorites).  The name of it was Itoh Dining (by Nobu) and a big sign at the door said Kobe Beef offering! Well, my dear friends, you all know that I am not a meat eater at all. But, I wanted to try all Japanese food styles so I bravely entered. At teppanyaki restaurants, the chef prepares meat, seafood (!) and vegetables (!) on a large iron griddle (teppan) while you are sitting around the griddle at the bar. As I am always eating alone I am always getting a seat at the bar which is great as I do not have to stare in my iPhone but can stare at the Chef and the yummy foods preparation instead. So I sat down and ordered not the full menu but some seafood and vegetables. The waiters face told me boring order but okay. After my two courses the rest of people surrounding me were still with course number 2 of 6. And then there was this smell of meat! A good one! Maybe it was also because of the two glasses of sparkling (no alcohol since weeks?!!!!) or because of the skipped breakfast but I heard myself ordering a 130g Kobe Beef steak!!!! My mom would not believe – well I facetimed her – and she believed then. Needless to say that this peace of cow (sorry Kobe) had been the best meat in my life so far. The Chef did not believe that an European lady could eat that much, well, you know that I am a good eater. Very, very happy I left and walked home through charming Gion to take my little Kobe beef stomach and myself to bed – in the comfortable Yukata of coz (maybe there were designed for so much good food?).