11/5 - 11/6 - Ryokan Meals

A ryokan is a traditional Japanese accommodation where you sleep on a tatami floor and also get your meals provided.  Taketoritei Maruyama had two huge meals in store for us.  I didn't quite realize how extensive the meals would be.

We partook in our evening meal shortly after our private onsen session.  We stepped into the special dining area.  Every group or couple had their own private dining room.  We were in room number 4 as far as I could tell from the Kanji character.  There was already some items on the table including our menu.  I was absolutely floored.  We had a 12 course meal in store for us.  I know N had mentioned that the meal was included and that it was fancy, but I was still caught off guard.  Already set on the table were two small drinks of strawberry wine perched on miniature carts.  There were also two plates of sashimi with 3 tiny pieces each.

We also had our choice of drinks.  I had seen a bottle of a local beverage out in the lobby and I was curious how it would taste.  It was called Arima Teppo Cider Water.  It didn't look alchoholic, but I was curious.  It turned out to taste exactly the same as Ramu Bottle pop.  If you've ever had Ramu Pop, it tastes like sugar water.  Both Ramu and the Cider Water were neat to try for the bottle, but it tasted syrupy and sugary.


N did the sensible thing and ordered an alcholic drink.  Many of the alcohol served was of the fruity variety.  There was a lot of choice, but N eventually settled on Peach Sake.

Our courses came one at a time.  There was the rice rolled in bean curd, the crab dumpling soup, and the beef pie.  All of them were really good, except the beef pie reminded me of a sausage roll.  I don't think this particular fusion dish worked, but everything else was good.

 

Then the our server in her exquisite kimono brought out a giant green plastic steamer shaped like a hollowed out stick of bamboo.  Inside was a steamed food dish, which I believe was fish.  However, by this time, my fatigue was truly setting in and I could barely enjoy the meal after this point.  I was so tired that I was no longer hungry.  I just wanted to sleep.  However, I managed to trek on and snap more shots of this 12-course meal.

  

We were ending the meal with smaller dishes including red miso soup, rice, and a small pickled dish.  The final dish was the raspberry mousse served in a pretty dessert bowl.  The dinner was as much for our eyes as it was for our stomachs.

 

The next morning, we also had breakfast in the same room.  This time, instead of the dishes coming out one at a time, most of it was already spread out on the table for us.  I was also feeling fully rested after sleeping through the night.  At least 6 or 7 little individual dishes were already out on the table.  However, there was no menu this morning to figure out what we were eating.  So you're guess is as good as mine.  I can safely say, though, that this is the most decadent breakfast that I have ever had.

There was also another steamer on the table today.  It was also a bamboo looking like container, but the steam hadn't started yet.  The server gestured to us that we would have to pull the string to get the steamer going.  What a neat little contraption.  I wonder what they do to get instant steam boiling.  I was tempted to play with the steamer, but thought better of it.

Overall, both meals were truly luxurious and decadent.  It's not the kind of meal that I would typically have.  N suspects that these two meals would have cost at least CAD$200 if we were to have the meals out in some fancy Japanese restaurant.  Of course, our stay included these meals and the cost packaged into the grand total.  But what a meal and what an experience.

11/3 - Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto

After a short bus ride south from Gion, we arrived at the bus stop at the foot of the hill to Kiyomizu-dera　[清水寺].  Kiyomizu literally means "clear water."  So it's the clear water temple?  Maybe that's too literal of a translation.

A lot of people were visiting the temple and the surrounding shops today.  We had to go up a narrow street with an even narrower sidewalk.  We were basically walking almost single-file up the hill to the temple.  The street had a few shops, but it was actually more of a residential street if anything.  Lots of cars were making there way up the hill.  Some were lucky to find parking spaces off to the side.  We, as pedestrians, just had to make sure we got out of the way if a car was coming up the hill.

We arrived at the top and were greeted by the giant red gate that marks the entrance to Kiyomizu-dera.  Then we looked down the other street that lead up to the table and realized that we missed all the shops.  So instead of going into the temple grounds right away, we decided to peruse the shops and stalls first.

There was quite a bit of food and snacks available on this busier stretch and so we partook in some of the local flavours.  There was the mochi snack with seaweed.  There were a variety of souvenir food gifts.  And, of course, good old fashioned souvenir stores.  I bought some souvenir food box for work.  When I tried it, the biscuit tasted savoury at first, but then the cinnamon-like sweetness kicked in after a sitting on the tongue for a while.  However, that first bite was a skull-cracker (just like my coworker said after she tried one).

We ventured into one little laneway and discovered a Hayao Miyazaki [宮崎 駿] theme store. Basically the store is full of Totoro and other Miyazaki film characters.  That was a neat little find nestled in behind another gift store.  At a fork in the road, there was a set of stairs that went down to more stores.  There was a store right on the corner that specialized in spices.  You could actually ask for samples of some of the different spices.  It reminds me of trying ice cream samples at Mondo Gelato, except the flavour was far from sweet.  N got a special Hello Kitty spice for herself and a friend at the store.  Is there any product in the world that doesn't have a limited Hello Kitty edition available?

We ventured down the set of stairs and came across a different store that sold a lot of cloth products with Japanese prints.  The store was halfway down the staircase.  Some products were meant to be handbags.  Some were cloth specially meant for bento boxes.  Others were just plain handkerchiefs.  That was a neat little shop halfway down the stairs.

We walked down a little further and made a turn somewhere.  We had another snack or two, but we were starting to become really hungry.  Lunch was in order, especially since it was around 2 in the afternoon by now.  It also happened that it started to sprinkle a little rain.  Many were now just standing under the eaves of different shops along the side of the street, but we decided to press on.  Eventually, the rain got worse and we just decided to hop into a restaurant and get some grub.

After a 10 minute wait, the server took us to the back of the restaurant that was separated from the front by a neat little garden piece with a overhead opening.  We ended sitting right beside a French family of five.  The couple had 3 boys and the youngest was probably about a year old.  We ordered our food and all. Eventually, at the table behind us, a pair of Canadians was seated.  N was looking at the embroidered Canadian flag on the guys backpack and they must have been staring at us once N whipped out her decommercialized Miga (Miga sans the green Vancouver 2010 scarf).  So basically all the foreigners in the restaurant had been effectively placed in the back of the restaurant.  I didn't feel discriminated in any way, but I just thought it funny that all of us in the back of the restaurants were "gaikoku-jin."

Once lunch was done, the sun had started shining again. It was time to finally make our way to the temple itself.  At the temple entrance, we hesitated a little wondering if it was going to be worth the price of admission.  I reasoned that we would not be in this part of the world for ages.  So it was now or never.

Were we ever glad that we paid to go in.  You round the corner from the ticket booth and are greeted the grand view from the grand balcony of the temple.  It was a beautiful view of the trees below and the Main Hall above it.  It was a busy day at the temple, but there was still plenty of room to move around.  As with many temples, there is a giant cistern for incense.  Some young foreigners had bought some incense sticks and were in the process of lighting and planting them in the cistern.  Just around the corner from the giant Main Hall, there was a section where you could pay into a box and ring a bell.  I'm not clear what the ringing of these bells represent, but it is cute to see little kids try to ring those bells.

 

 

We eventually made our way down from the Main Hall to an area where people were lining up to collect water from 3 flowing fountains overhead.  It was a long line up and we didn't understand what it all meant.  So we passed on the water thing, but it did offer a good photo op.

That was it for the temple.  We were soon exiting the temple grounds and making our way back to the main road to catch a bus to our last tourist attraction for the day, Ginkaku-ji, or the Silver Pavilion.