Kyoto day 2

It was surprisingly cold in April, about 10-20 degrees Celsius. Our second day in Kyoto with mum was a cold cloudy day with a few small showers. We first visited Ginkakuji (silver pavilion), which was quite far away from the station. We jumped in the very long queue for the bus and it was about a 30min ride up to Ginkakuji. When we got off we saw a small canal lined with cherry blossom trees.

We headed into the gardens of Ginkakuji. It was absolutely beautiful. There was a lot of sand (?)art. I don't remember seeing any cherry blossom trees within the garden itself. I really recommend visiting at least once not for the silver pavilion itself but to see the gardens. It is quite out of the way which is a downside i guess.

Sand dome

Unfortunately got a big head in the pic.. =(

The (not very) silver pavilion.

Had to stop for a quick choux cream before we embarked along the Philsophers walk that follows the cherry tree lined canal to another temple Nanzen-ji. The walk is named as such because an influential 20th century Japanese philosopher was thought to have used it for daily meditation. The walk is supposed to take about 30min, although it took a lot longer that that with many stops for pictures. It was a pleasant walk apart from the rain. The petals were starting to fall down with the rain. It probably wouldn't have been such a nice walk without the blossoms.

Sam's matach custard choux with matcha ice cream. Tasty!

Fishing by the canal

I loved seeing these random blossoms coming out of the trunk of the tree.

Japanese shiba

Really like these cool flowers which bloom in a halo shape.

We then made a quick stop at Kinkakuji (golden pavilion). 

We headed back to Kyoto station where we took the train to visit Fushimi Inari Shrine. It is famous for it's thousands of torii gates.  You can walk to the top of the mountain which takes a couple of hours. The a hiking trail is covered in torii gates. We walked part way up the mountain to a viewing spot then headed back down. We weren't originally planning to walk up to where we did but we were misdirected but a wrongly placed sign.

Random really pink branch

The wind was picking up. You can see the petals falling.

Senbon torii - thousands of torii gates.

The two parallel rows of torii gates are the start of the hiking trail. It was here that Sam was asked by some eldery Japanese ladies to take photos with them.. Not sure if it was 'cause he was a foreigner or what but it was quite funny. =P Didn't get a picture for myself though. =(

Soo many gates!

Stairs, stairs and more stairs.

You can see where we started. The red tori gate.

 After finally reaching the bottom of the mountain we jumped back on the trains and headed to Arashiyama and for lunch. We stopped at a specialty soybean curd skin place. It was soo good but soo much. I really liked the warabi mochi they gave for dessert as well.

Tofu skins lunch..  Soybean curd skins were in some type of soy broth with different sauces.. Yummyy!!

Sam's hot pot tofu skin lunch.

After lunch we walked through bamboo path and into the Okochisanso Garden. This is one place I did think was a lot nicer in autumn with the red maple leaves everywhere. 

Arashiyama - cherry blossom patches

Red maple leaves.. Wrong season?! o_O

On our way back through the bamboo we visited Tenryu-ji and it's garden. There were soo many beautiful flowers and sakura trees. It was my first time visiting this garden and I really enjoyed it. Many sakura petals had fallen which was absolutely beautiful floating on the water and gently resting on the mossy carpet.

Really liked these flowers

Sakura petals fallen in the water

Sakura petals on moss carpet

The little girl above was soo cute! She would pick up the stones turn them around in her hand then put it back. Pick up another and repeat the same process.. SUPER SUPER CUTE!!!

It was one LOONNNGG day but we did many things which was quite satisfying. It was nice to get back to the hotel and have a rest before heading out to dinner at an izakaya restaurant. We got some karaage, grilled skewers, gyoza and some salad. Overall it was a really good and tasty.

Anmitsu

Green tea parfait!

Spring in Kyoto with mum

My mum visited us at the start of April this year. It was nice to see her and spend some time with her. We met her in Kyoto, after Sam and I got a little lost trying to find where the limousine bus would drop her off. Our first stop after dropping off our bags at the hotel was Kiyomizudera. The sakura trees were in full blossom in Kyoto compared to in Kobe. As the blossoms don't last very long, meant that there were many many people there to see the sakura. It was my first time seeing them and they were everywhere and so pretty! It's quite a different scene visiting Kyoto in Spring and Autumn and it's hard to say which I prefer. Hmm...

Flowers of the most common type of sakura.

Elderly man painting

Next we visited a little shop called En we were told a little about the history of tea ceremony and watched a lady prepare the tea. We also got to try whisking up our own matcha. Mine didn't foam. =(

On our walk from Kiyomizudera to En we passed my Maruyama park and decided to have a walkthrough on the way back. There were many stalls set up around the place with food such as takoyaki, yakisoba, okonomiyaka, mochi and candied fruit. Below the trees were many people having hanami (flower viewing) parties. The park gets lit up at night time as well. A gigantic 40-foot weeping sakura tree, over 80 years old is another of the main attractions of this park.

The big ol' tree. It was painstakingly difficult to get a photo with no one in it..

Panda bread

Last Sunday it was Father's day here in Japan. At one of our favourite bakeries they were selling these panda breads for father's day. Their heads had a chocolate custard and their bodies plain custard. You also received a little pen/ tube of chocolate if you wanted to write a message. Overall it wasn't that great. The chocolate custard was so-so as the chocolate used in and on it wasn't very good.. It was fun though.. =P

This is how it came with the decorating chocolate.

Wasn't very good at decorating it. Tried to copy an example they had but failed.. =(

Whahaha..

They have these tasty caramels from Hokkaido here. They have many many different and interesting flavours including potato (which my in-laws tried), tomato and corn. You can even get Genghis Khan Lamb caramels. O_O !! I played it safe and tried strawberry, kinako (roasted soybean flour), melon, shirakaba no shizuku milk (not really sure what it is), Hokkaido condensed milk and Hokkaido butter. Only one I wasn't much of a fan of was the melon one as it was a bit too strong.

Plum (ume) tree viewing

Today, one of Sam's colleagues took us plum tree viewing with his two sons. Not too sure where we went, but it was past Himeji somewhere.. =P The plum trees produce a different type of plum than western plum. It is more sour plum and usually eaten in it's pickled state commonly in onigiri. The Japanese plum trees are beautiful trees with a delightful sweet fragrance. We saw four different colours - white, pink, red (although it was just really dark pink) and blue/green. I say blue/green as they call what I consider green to be blue. The traffic lights are called red, yellow and blue (green) =P. The blue/green one was slightly green a bit like greenish hydrangeas. We saw a quite a few people who would venture off the path into the trees to find a nice spot to sit and have lunch under the trees.
 

Plum blossom tea - salty like the seaweed tea in Kyoto

Close up white plum tree

Close up 'red' plum tree

Pink and red

Close up pink plum tree

This one was a pinky white

Green plum tree

Sad weeping plum tree

Sam's colleague took us out for some eel lunch. It was really good! They also gave us 3 whole charcoal grilled 'sama' fish. It was tasty fish, but it was a little difficult to eat due to all the little bones as we hadn't eaten one before. We watched a variety show the other week, where they showed and ranked housewives skills and manners in eating this fish. I was trying to remember how they showed the proper way to eat it whilst slowly destroying my fish. =(

Fukuoka day 3

Aiyo!! This was sitting as a draft for soo long.. Oops.. This is the third day/ installment of our time in Fukuoka.

Tim (Sam's family friend) and his son Yogi took us around Fukuoka on Sunday before taking us to the airport. Our first stop was Kushida shrine. It was a real blessing having Tim with us as he was able to explain what certain things in the shrine were/for. Hakata shrine hosts Hakata Gion Yamakasa a festival celebrated in early July. It includes a float race, where men carry riduculously heavy wooden floats and race.

Sam and Yogi in one of the entrances/mouths to the shrine

Example of a float

Back view of the float

A wedding started whilst we were there

Example of a traditional Hakata wall

We went to Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. We saw two exhibitions - Voyage and awakening: Chinese contemporary art 1979-2009, and Freedom in Blossom! :Gangaw Village and Experimental Art in 1980s Burma. The Second exhibition I found extremely interesting as the artwork shows some of the hardships that the artists had experienced/ witnessed.

Canal city has one floor dedicated to ramen and is named ...  RAMEN STADIUM. There are many ramen shops on this floor and you purchase your meal tickets for the particular shop you want to eat at before getting in the LONG queues. We got there fairly early but it was already packed so we decided to go for good ol' Ichiran downstairs. This particular branch of Ichiran, located in Canal city gives you the option of having an original blend of vinegar in your ramen. Sam and I tried the ramen with vinegar this time. It enhanced the flavour of the broth, however I wish you could specify how much vinegar you could get as it was a little too vinegary for me.

Ramen Stadium entrance