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:)