Tuesday evening

 



We walk about a mile from the hotel to the Gion area of Kyoto, famous for its older traditional style buildings.

 It feels as though very tour group in the city has the same idea too, which must give our tour guides a hard time making sure we keep together!



As we come to the end of one of the narrow streets we can see why the area is thronged with so many people - more cherry blossom!



It's quite hard to make our way through the mass of people posing and taking selfies in front of the beautiful blossom and at one point I have to stop myself taking a photo of all,the people taking photos!


 

However, our Japanese guide Hero keeps us all under control and soon moves us on at her quite fast pace, which tour guide Trevor, who is at the back, finds a real problem as several of the slower members of the party are in danger of losing the group in the crowd! 
After a long day and lots of steps we are all pleased to see the traditional restaurant, and sink gratefully onto our seats ready to order a nice cold Japanese beer. The meal that follows, consisting of miso soup, tofu, tempura prawn and vegetables has teppanyaki for the main course, which we all cook on a little cauldron shaped barbecue on our table. At this point, the small traditional room ( with no obvious windows or ventilation) becomes thick with smoke rising from each table! John, who has assumed the role of head teppanyaki chef on our table, does a great job of cooking the various vegetables and small pieces of Wagyu beef, which we all enjoy.
Our walk back to the hotel along the narrow streets is a pleasant way to round off the day, although my feet are beginning to complain by the time we reach our hotel and when I check my step count on my phone, we have walked 10,491 steps today!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saturday April12th - Our last day

Image
 This morning's view from the bedroom  We have made the  most of the hotel breakfasts while being here, however I have wondered what the Japanese people having breakfast with us have thought about our appetites Having discreetly watched their choices at this time, I've noticed that the women especially, place teaspoon size portions of the Japanese breakfast choices onto their plate and then slowly and delicately take tiny mouthfuls with their chopsticks, inbetween small sips of green tea. This is in contrast to the male members of our party, who having consumed the fresh fruit, cereal, yoghurts options then move onto plates piled high with omelettes, hash browns, tiny sausages and bacon before finally polishing off a plate of croissants, pastries and sometimes cakes! Trev's eyes soon light up when he spots this doughnut station and he makes sure he has enough room left for a few of them! As it's our last day and at least one of us needs to walk off their breakfast, we d...
Read more

Thursday April 4th -;Not quite the day we expected!

Image
 As is often the case on the longer Great Rail tours we have been on, we are just getting to know a hotel and it's time to move on. Such is the case today as we are journeying by train and coach to the Hakone National Park and potential first views of Mount Fuji. Walking through the busyTokyo streets to the station, we are impressed by the cleanliness and orderliness. We had driven through the incredibly busy and famous Shibuya crossing last night in Tokyo, where around 3,000 people waited patiently for the lights to change before swarming across in all directions - we were there at rush hour too! At the train station we are all amused to see Japanese engineering in action when between the train emptying and us boarding, a switch is flicked and all the carriage seats turn round through 180 degrees so they are facing forward when we move off! The journey through the suburbs is flat and uneventful, with everyone looking to the skies in the hope that the heavy cloud will start to left...
Read more

Our step count increases even more!

Image
 After a long day we are all ready to relax at rhe next hotel, but are a little bemused to be told that the hotel staff will come out to greet us on the  coach when we arrive. We realise why pretty quickly, the hotel is massive, three different blocks, with connecting walkways on certain floors. The hotel staff member actually holds up a large map and explains it all to us, unfortunately it's in heavily accented English, so I'm not sure we quite all get the idea! We discover that we are on the 17th floor, an absolutely massive room with terrific views across the surrounding countryside to the distant mountains. This is another example of the Japanese pyjamas available, the blue ties are to keep everything together! After a short while to shower and change for dinner we begin the trek to the restaurant, and I use the word trek advisedly! We have to go down to the lobby on floor 2, round a maze of corridors to reach the lobby and then up another lift to floor 7 where the restaur...
Read more