Kyoto, Japan

I had a great time visiting Kyoto. I got to see many friends and pursue my old haunts from back when I studied abroad in the city. Almost three years has passed since then but not much has changed.

On the first night there I met up with an AKP friend, Akane, who is currently working in Osaka. We went out for pasta and parfaits at my favorite parfait place in town -- Karafuneya. This is a place that has a choice of over 300 types of parfaits. I defaulted to my favorite, which is the Japanese style parfait complete with rice balls, green tea ice cream, and red bean. So good.

Later in the week we finally got to go get more parfaits at the famous green tea place in Gion called Tsujiri. Usually people are lined up down the street just to get a seat at Tsujiri, but maybe because we went in the middle of the day on a weekday, we lucked out and were shown to a table straight away. The parfait was delicious, but not really worth all the hype, I think. 

Duh and of course we did puri kura! I love Japanese photo booths even though the majority of the people using the machines were high/ middle school-aged girls...

I also finally got to take a trip to Nara, south of Kyoto. Nara is famous for the deer that wander freely around the park and temple grounds. We went to Todai-ji, perhaps the most famous temple in the area. It was gorgeous and inside was a giant Buddha. The place was infested with school children. As we walked towards the temple we were approached by several deer looking for senbei crackers, which you can buy at stands along the road. The deer can be pretty demanding to get at their senbei, and so the school kids kept buying the crackers and throwing them at the deer and then running away. The deer swarmed around them like smelly ravenous beasts. 

Todai-ji

I think autumn was the perfect season to go to Kyoto. The leaves were just starting to change color and the weather was perfect. it was in the 70s every day, quite warm, and then temps dropped at night . A typhoon blew through the region the day before I got there, so I avoided all the humid, hot, rainy weather.

I celebrated Halloween in Kyoto with Mike, who moved on to Kyoto after a brief stay in Seoul. We met at the hostel I stayed with in Seoul, Ed House, and decided to meet up again in Japan. Such a good idea. Mainly we perused the streets taking pictures with all the people in costumes.

My last full day in Kyoto was on Friday and I met up with my host mom from my study abroad days. She took me out for udon followed by a parfait at this very traditional parfait place in Gion. I wish I took pictures because it was gorgeous. We walked in and removed our shoes right away. We were led to a large room with several tables and were seated on the floor. The room was decorated in the traditional style and had a lot of wood and sliding paper doors. To one side was a wall of windows and outside, a small and peaceful garden. It was so nice to see my host mom again and just chat about everything that had happened since I'd seen her last (nearly two years ago!). It was also nice to realize I could still understand Japanese and speak enough to communicate.