Kyoto - 25th November 2013

Our last day in Kyoto.. before we left this beautiful paradise that is well-known for its autumn foliage..indeed it didnt disappoint us and in fact amazed us above our expectations despite the crowds haha..

We decided to do something..and that is to challenge myself into dressing up as a maiko while my husband was transformed into a samurai! Mine is more elaborate makeup, with a huge variety of colors to choose for my attire, my headset and my accessories. His is a very simplified version and we could take couple shots together.

The studio we went to is Yumekoubou at Kyoto station. We took some time to find the studio and we kind of lost our way. Fortunately, we managed to find it with the help of nice locals. The whole procedure of drrssing took about an hour and it was definitely notnan easy task. I felt really suffocated after putting on the heavy hairset and bundled by many layers of clothes. I can imagine how uneasy the maikos and geishas experienced during their training...

After 2 hours of photoshoot at the studio, we waited shortly for our photos. I got 20 shots of me and 2 shots with my hubby.. all printed in those neoprint sheet and I also have the softcopy of all the photos taken. As a maiko, you are not supposed to smile showing your teeth. There are times me and my hubby burst out laughing at each other after we were dressed up. It was such a hilarious time and we really enjoyed this activity. Hahaha..Im embarrased to show all the pics here except the one above :x

After Yumekoubou, we had lunch at Gion for some desserts and ramen..as well as visiting some of the souvenirs shops and buying enough macha-flavored Kitkat for my sister before bading farewell to Kyoto and en route towards Osaka..


Ramen!

Mont Blanc cake!

The trip to Osaka is kinda quick..I think within half an hour, we reached Osaka and were greeted by...so far..the most impressive hotel to us..and that was Hotel Hankyu International Osaka. It was a deal gotten from booking.com and Dear booked it simply because of the huge room size and impressive features in the room. We were very amazed upon entry into the room and service was excellent as well by the hotel staff in explaining each feature in the room! Always appreciate the hospitality by the Japanese.

It was already evening by the time we freshened up and decided to hop by Umeda streets for our dinner. We chanced upon this gyoza store..its pretty cramped inside wth people smoking and drinking asahi beer. We didnt mind as the strong scent of the gyoza kept us enthralled..and we were glad to have our dinner there.



Truly an authentic experience..eating gyoza and drinking asahi beer at a temperature of 6C during the night :)

We called it a day and went off to the nearby Isetan to purchase Kyoho grapes!


I  didnt know about this species of grapes until Dear recommended me its a must-try during his biz trip 2yrs back. And true enough, we can only find this grapes in Kansai region, not in Tokyo. Very very nice grapes and what we saw here in Singapore are usually imported from Taiwan which taste slightly sour. But from Japan, the kyoho grapes all taste sweet and its juice burst right into your throat once u consume it! Im not kidding, you just gotta try it when you are in Kansai region. And its definitely much cheaper than in Singapore. In Singapore, from Pokka Juice, we have the Kyoho grape flavored drink now.. a way to satiate our desire for Kyoho grapes at times when we miss Japan hahaha

I forgot to mention...the room that we stayed in has a full length window view where you can see the skyline of Osaka..what more can we ask for indeed! Rest early!

Kyoto - 24th November 2013

Today is our 2nd last day at Kyoto and it was a Sunday. Once again, we expected crowds everywhere we went and indeed and it didnt fail our expectations :(

At the Door steps
Our first stop was Tofukuji. I guessed this place was the most beautiful and it was the most crowded temple we have been in our whole life!

Undeniably, the autumn foliage was the most amazing, even better than Kinkakuji. The raging red, the green moss, the temple, everywhere was a beauty. No wonder, Tofukiji was ranked as one of the top spots to visit in Kyoto during autumn. During other seasons, it's basically empty.

Stampede in the background!
People with the autumn foliage. It's a maze. In fact, it was like a stampede but well worth for a good reason.

I only had this rare opporunity to capture this angle for a second without people intrusions hahaha

We were so hungry after covering Tofukiji.  As Uji was just nearby, we decided to take the train and hop to  Nakamura Tokichi Honten, this famous shop for some macha food! It's just right across the street from the Uji train station..

Uji is well known for its green tea/ macha. Almost all the green tea are produced in this area due to the water and nature elements. This shop was one of the top recommended places and we waited in queue for 45min before it was our turn. I wrote my name in kanji, lucky the waitress knew what I was writing and pronounced my name correctly hahaha..

My macha-soba! The simple looking dish tasted amazingly great with its soup base and I'm missing it even now while typing this blogpost.

The meal comes with this ichiban dessert. I always love the combination of macha icecream and azuki beans. This js just what I need for an energy booster and Im glad we managed to visit Uji for this.

After a hearty lunch, we headed back to the train station to continue our autumn foliage craving at the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This is a fox shrine. And it has the famous red gates which line all the way up the mountain.

You can trek all the way up but we did only halfway to conserve energy for the remaining of the day.

Us at the Gates...

We saw many couples and families with their kids in the traditional attire, visiting the shrine together.
Our next stop was at Nanzenji. Also a famous place for autumn foliage but unfortunately it started to rain after half an hour when we reached there. I highly recommend folks to visit Nanzenji as there are fewer people than Tofukiji and you can get very interesting shots at this temple.

We didnt manage to visit Ginkakuji(Silver Pavilion) and the Philosopher path although both are nearly located to Nanzenji. Perhaps we will leave it to the next visit to Kyoto during the cherry blossoms time, which is an equally beautiful time ay those areas.

We left Nanzenji after the heavy downpour and visited the Kamo river, Teramachi shopping street and Nishiki market. Nishiki market was buzzling with people and food,  and free food tastings! we had great time trying the various interesting tidbits, food, cakes along the way. But I recommend to visit early morning, as once again that day was like a stampede everywhere :(

We explored into Teramachi shopping street and ventured into Kamo river, which was a leisure stroll ater a heavy rain. It was nearing sunset time so the river was shimmering as if it was gold. I kind of like the reflection of buildings, trees, peple cycling and walking in the river. A very pleasant walk. And same thing once again, we were hungry after so much of walking and sightseeing. Hahaha... we decided to go for some unagi rice and we could not find a reasomable one at Pontocho...

And by chance, we found this one... Kaneyo..which was one of the famous restaurant for Unagi! Lucky us!

Boy, we were so hungry after seeing the huge serving of unagi on top of the don. You can choose the size you want. There wasnt too many people at the restaurant asit wa already 9pm. We ended th meal with asahi beer and it was a great meal! Highly recommend this restaurant for authentic unagi experience! They specialise only in unagi rice:)

Kyoto - 23rd November 2013

This was the day for our Kyoto Cycling Tour. Based on the great reviews from Tripadvisor, we signed for this and the route covers from Kinkakuji, to Ryoanji, NInanji, enroute towards arashiyama.You can in fact rent a bike from them and explore by yourself or go on with a guided tour..

We met our guide Hiroko-san . She's an excellent guide with good English and always trying hard to see if there is any discomfort, and tried to explain each site which we visited in full details to us. Kudos to her service!

I must say cycling in Kyoto is not very easy although it is flat for most parts, but there are many up the slope moments which was a challenge to our stamina. We always wondered why the bikes in Japan look so beautiful and elegantly designed and were really happy to have this experience to ride on one of these.. A Tokyo bike in Singapore costs near SGD1000..not so cheap!

Kinkakuji and Autumn Foliage

Our first stop : Kinkakuji( the Golden Pavilion ) look at the shimmering gold and its reflection in the pond...everyone was mesmerised by this which explain the huge crowd that day!

Us at the Kinkakuji temple garden.

After visitng Kinkakuji and walking through the garden, we cycled about 15mins to Ryoanji..

we know it's famous for the isolated rocks within the given dimension..upon reaching, everyone sat by the temple stage and view the rocks at various angles..definitely will give you the zen feeling..

Me and Hiroko-san at the entrance of Ryoanji, approaching the temple entrance gate, and the route was filled with beautiful autumn foliage accompanied by pretty weather.

So we sat as well to view the various rocks which are supposed to represent islands in this universe. There are 15rocks, but at any angle you can only see 14 rocks.

This is the garden we saw at Ryoanji temple..amazing sight!

Next up is Ninnaji temple..which we had a photostop with our lovely bikes.

And from there, it's all the way riding past Hirosawa pond, a very beautiful sight which you can see the pics below..And along the way, we saw the following..

Raccoon Spotted!

Cycling Cycling

Hirosawa Pond's beauty

Scarecrows....

And we finally reached Arashiyama!!

The famous Arashiyama bamboo groves. That day was a Saturday and it was the peak of autumn foliage. It was the only rare opportunity we had to take pics at Arashiyama without showing the crowd!

Although they claimed walking through the bamboo groves would make you feel peace and calm, we couldnt feel that due to the crowd. I guess it is better to visit it in the weekdays.

Hiroko-san brought us to various scenic spots in arashiyama and we bade farewell to her at the bicycle terminal in that area. We were famished by then and decided to go for Yu-tofu.. a famous Kyoto cuisine.

Yu-tofu set lunch.

Every dish is made of to-fu. Be it grilled, steamed or in pudding or soyamilk form. It'sreally an eyeopener and a very healthy meal. After getting enough calories and rest, we continued our adventure in Arashiyama. Manoeuvring around is not easy because of the crowds!!...

We initially wanted to visit Otagi nenbutsu ji temple, located at far north up at the Sagano area, but could be acceasible by walking. But by the time we reached somewhere near to the destination, the sky had turned dark and it was just 5pm. But the temple had already closed. This was one of my greatest regret as we didnt get to see this rather untouched and interesting temple. I saw a blogpost about this place which you can refer via this link. Hopefully, I will get to see this in my next trip to Kyoto.

Ending off our adventure at Arashiyama with this owl picture I took at this beautiful place. Owls represent symbol of wisdom in Japan. Some people will buy it and put at home instead of the beckoning cat which is known to welcome wealth!

Omu rice at Kyoto station to end off this wonderful day!

Kyoto - 22nd November 2013

We reached Kyoto pretty late at around evening time..and took such a qalk to our Sakura Ryokan. It's about 10min walk from internet but I feel it takes longer. It's very near to Nishi Honganji..it takes some time to walk from the Kyoto station to the ryokan. It's located within the residential area. So with our heavy backpacks , we struggled our way to the ryokan... literally hahAHa

We decided to go visit Kiyomizudera light illumination during the night. We took a train ride to Gion station and walked to Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka,  which are both very charming streets at night, lined with various cuisine rstaurants, soft icecream, Kyoto yu-tofu, ramen etc..

Below is one interesting shop..Mini Ghibli shop!

The various Ghibli museum characters

Totoro at busstop!

Before I forgot, Gion is a street where maikos and geishas are frequently seen in evening time, rushing to their venues..we didnt have the fortune to see any...better luck next time!

Icecream again!!

En route to Kiyomizu dera.. we saw this poster..and to our shock..we saw the long long queue..everyone wanna see autumn foliage at night! The crowd was amazingly enormous..hahaha

Finally after 45min, we got entry in. It was thw first time we experienced the huge fanatic crowd during autmn foliage viewing. More to come in the upcoming days...this was in fact the most minor..the worst crowd was at Tofukiji hahaha.. 

But everyone was still in order..and polite..no crowd pushing..and crowd control was still good. So we managed to get very nice view of the maple leaves, the foliage at night including he magnificent temple..we were glad we were there despite the tired feet hahaa..

Look at the crowd!!

From afar...

This pic was taken from the Kyoto station en route back home...

From near..haha.. we had some ramen along the way for dinner and dropped by the convenience store for some more snacks ...cant wait to share more autumn foliage at other top spots for viewing in Kyoto tomorrow. and tomorrow, we are going for a cycling tour with Kyoto Cycling Tour project (KCTP)!