Day 13 of 15, Fushimi, Uji and Arashiyama

This is the last day that we’re going to spend in Kyoto. How time flies.

We’re going to Uji today!

This is the street that we walk nearly everyday to reach the street leading to the subway station.

Mat is holding a bag of rubbish to throw at the subway station

Before going to Uji, we dropped by Fushimi Inari Shrine. It takes about 10 minutes train ride from Kyoto Station.

Inari, is the god of rice. Merchants and manufacturers worship Inari for wealth. Inari was seen as the patron of business.

This place is full of Torii. Each of the Torii is donated by a Japanese business.

There are just rows and rows of these donated Torii along the footpath.

Rows and rows and rows of them….

Foxes (kitsune), are regarded as messengers. They put the rice granary in their mouths.

And more rows…

… and rows…

… and rows…

… it’s a really long walk up the mountain, with toriis lining the footpath all the way to the top. We didn’t really aim to finish the walk, maybe just a quarter of the way. And I kept stopping and stopping to get pictures of these toriis. Mat was pushing me for time, because we still have to go to Uji, which is our main destination of the day.

But I still stopped and stopped to take photos of rows…

… and rows…

… and rows….

… of torii… Ok…  my model getting frustrated liaw… he said not enough photos of the torii har…. :P:P… gomen nasai (I’m sorry).

ok ok ok… going going… then we finally left Fushimi Inari. Caught the next train to Uji.

This train so cool one… first time I see a train got ceiling fan. Got air con also.

Tada….. we’re in Uji. Mat is standing in front of a pillar sign of Byodoin Temple, a World Heritage. The most famous temple in Uji.

And we didn’t go in… hehehe… we were really sien of going into temples now. We walked towards the back of the temple and managed to get a peep from behind. Doesn’t look all that interesting.

Uji, is the main town producing green tea for the whole of Japan. Every Japanese green tea in the world comes from here, Uji.

When you walk through the town of Uji, you can smell green tea in the air. Everywhere smells of green tea. Every shop was roasting green tea. Nearly everything was made of green tea.

If you ever come to Uji, do go to Uji City Municipal Tea Ceremony House.

Come here and experience the drinking of Japanese green tea, served to you the traditional way. An experienced not to be missed in Japan!

Of course there are other tea houses around Japan serving the traditional way. I recommended this place because it’s cheaper than other places. They only charge 500YEN per person, includes a cup of tea with Japanese seasonal sweet.

This lady bowed sooooo low I felt embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do. I just kept saying arigato arigato….

I recorded a video on the whole tea ceremony process. Enjoy!

This is the Japanese seasonal sweet. Looks too pretty to be eaten. Very nice!

This is the lady that made tea for Mathias. Yeah… she only demonstrate for 1 person. Whereas mine was taken in by another lady.

The river is so clear. Can even see the bottom of the river.

On the map, we saw this picture of Amagase Dam. According to the map, it doesn’t look that far.

We ended up walking around 2 kilometers. And we haven’t even reach the dam. We reached the Amagase Suspension Bridge first We really wanted to give up walking to reach the dam. But then there was another map near this bridge, and it looked more accurate than our tourist map. It was another kilometer to the dam. I told Mathias, we’ve already walked this far, might as well try and reach that dam right?

So off we walked and walked and walked… and yay! Finally reached the dam….

… to find out, the gates are not opened

DAMN!

Mat was soooo disappointed. We expected to see water gushing out from the gates of the dam. We didnt’ even bother to walk all the way to the top, because we were pretty exhausted already. But ok lah… we were consoled a bit with the view.

So back we went, 3 kilometers!!!!!

These birds are called Cormorants. They are used to catch fish in the river. Cormorant Fishing. The bird will dive into the river, catch the fish by swallowing the fish half way into their beaks with only the tail visible, then the fisherman will pull the fish out from their beaks. It only happens at night. Sorry, no real live action.

Time for lunch. Found this restaurant. The queue was really long. Food must be good. So we decided to put our name on the waiting list, and waited. Waited for about half an hour.

And it was worth the wait…

First, we were served cold Uji tea. Refreshing! Refillable btw.

I ordered this hot soup of green tea soba. This was the best soba I’ve ever tasted!

And Mat ordered this set, cold green tea soba, with rice.

Now comes the best part. Dessert!

Mat had this: Green tea pudding.

And I had this: Assortments of green tea sweets with green tea ice cream.

It’s absolutely heavenly!

We were given this bowl of green tea powder so while you eat you sprinkle some of the green tea powder on your dessert. Green tea power to the max!

As if our lunch was not enough, Mat bought some more snacks from that restaurant. Something like Dorayaki.

A Dorayaki is a type of Japanese confection which consists of two small pancakes wrapped around a filling of sweet red bean paste. In japanese, dora means “gong”.

“Legend has it that the first Dorayaki were made when a samurai named Benkei forgot his gong (dora) upon leaving a farmer’s home where he was hiding and the farmer subsequently used the gong to fry the pancakes, thus the name Dorayaki.” – taken from wikipedia.

This Dorayaki however, is filled with green tea ice cream and a big fat red bean. I was already too stuffed from that massive lunch. So I just took a bite.

And that’s all for Uji. The rest are just temples and shrines. We didn’t realise that we can finish Uji that quickly.

Looking through the Lonely Planet, we made a impromptu decision to go to Arashiyama.

Fushimi and Uji is in the south east of Kyoto. Arashiyama is in the north west of Kyoto. Totally oppossite direction. But we had time.

Coming out from Arashiyama station, is this museum. I have no idea what SL stands for. SteamLiner?

Main purpose to visit Arashiyama…. The Bamboo Grooves!… or Forest.

Nice right? The bamboo is still used to manufacture various products, such as baskets, cups, boxes, mats and pieces of art at workshops in the Arashiyama area.

This place also feels very cooling. A relief from the heat.

Ok… time to go back to Kyoto. And also to look for dinner… hmm… felt like we just ate lunch from my flow of pictures right? It takes time to travel from the south to the north of Kyoto.

The ladies working at the information counter in Kyoto Station are absolutely incredibly superb. Salute to them lah… There are thousands of shops in Kyoto station, and when Mathias asked if there was a sushi bar in this place, without hesitation, the lady just took out a map, and gave us directions on how to get to the sushi bar. By the way, we didn’t say Sushi Bar to that lady. We said somewhere along these lines:

“Sumimasen. Kaiten Sushi, doko?” (Excuse me. Conveyor Belt Sushi, where?)

If you have been to Kyoto Station, you’ll agree with me that this station is massive! Can get lost one.

Here we are at the Sushi Bar. Our dinner.

The sushi in Japan is nothing like the sushi you’ve seen in Malaysia, and even Australia (unless you go to the really authentic ones).

One thing for sure, there is no such thing as having avocado on your sushi.

Ate 14 plates of sushi altogether.

Oh ya, Japanese are extremely polite ppl. I really miss that.

The sense of hospitality in Japan is really impressive.When you enter a shop in Japan, you are systematically welcomed with the expression: irasshaimase!, which means “come in”, which is funny, because you’re usually already in the shop.

In this sushi bar, to make sure you heard it, they will repeat it continuously and loudly: irasshaimase, irasshaimase! And when there are more than one waiter, waitress, sushi chef..etc… each of them will shout in turn.

That’s when you enter.

There is also an expression for when you go out: arigato gozaimashita! And you’ll hear it until you left the shop. Even the chef in the kitchen will pop his head out and shout “Arigato Gozaimashita!”. This means “thank you very much”. Even if you leave the shop without buying anything, every vendor will thank you.

On the end note, I’ll leave you with another picture of Kyoto Tower.

Be back next week to check out the final two days!

Oyasumi.

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