Armed with some new Japanese medicines to prevent and slow down the onset of Diarrhea I am feeling better, this is especially important because today we are doing a day trip to Kyoto, mainly the eastern side of the city. We first visited Nishiki Market, something like a street food shopping arcade that is very popular with tourists.
These twin prawn tempura were freshly fried and one drizzled in tempura sauce while the other sprinkled with salt. Very tasty and crispy, pretty good shit.
The entire market is actually pretty long, longer than I thought it was going to be with ample amount of stores and food sellers along with fish mongers, butchers and other food related vendors. It was empty when we arrived by after an hour in it was jack packed with tourists.
Being geographically close to Nishiki Market, we decided to set the course for Yasaka Shrine. As per probably every day, on the way/after within the area they hold something that looks like a festival setting with food stalls offering the expected yakisoba, fried chicken, skewers and some other more creative and new items that are more uncommon.
The main central piece of Yasaka shine; the many lanterns. Years ago I was here at night when they were all lit and it was quite a cool see. It’s a very very different experience in the day time.
And because we went in the afternoon, we were able to access the associated park area for the shrine, something which is is new to me. It was a huge park area filled with cherry blossoms, little water bridges and walkways, perfect for gatherings and chilling.
After getting our fill of Yasaka we walked to the subway to head to our next location, Kiyomizu-dera. Being one of the most popular tourist spots in Kyoto, it was insanely crowded and busy probably more so than usual since the shrine itself finished renovations a number of years ago and this being the first year Japan is open to free roaming tourism.
Nice green background. This scenery is what people are here for when you go to Kiyomizu-dera.
Contrary to some, I have not died yet. I’m still able to walk and continue despite my poor health. Those medicines really did help quite a but, although it doesn’t stop occasional bouts of it, it allows me to ‘hold it in’ a lot longer than if I went with nothing.
After lots of photos taken at Kiyomizu, it was getting late so we decided to head to our last location of the day. We needed to walk to the nearest subway station but by simply walking anywhere in Kyoto you may end up with some nice scenery like this river. I mean it’s so easy to take nice photos of Kyoto, it’s not surprising it’s so popular.
And here we are, the famous Fushimi Inari shrine, known for it’s thousand torii gates pathway, although at night, which in itself is a different experience.
While there were still tourists like us there as it can be seen, it quickly became apparently that night was not the best time to visit Fushimi Inari shrine because all of the sellers of charms had closed and it was really dark. They don’t put up nearly enough lights that you would think and it makes it really hard to take good photos.
My phone camera doesn’t do night very well so something like this was the best I could do. My sister’s camera is the newest Iphone so it could handle dark photos much better. Most of the photos for this place was on her phone but even then, because of the lack of lights/lamps and the general darkness of the place, it’s hard to get selfies or other photos good. It’s much better to go any other time than at night, that’s for sure. A little disappointing but at least we got here in one piece.
After we were done with Fushimi Inari shrine we decided to head to Kyoto Station to eat at this underground Udon shop that served curry egg chicken tempura udon. It was featured in one of those Japanese ASMR cooking/food youtube channels and it was a goal of ours to visit and eat here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrGTgJ3syzw
Oh boy, this was pretty delicious, never had anything quite like this, curry udon with egg and fried chicken tempura. Good shit. The placed was packed and very small but we managed to get a seat regardless. There were a lot more foreigners eating and trying out the place there as well so I guess they all found out about this place from that video I linked as well lol good shit.
And that about wrapped up our Kyoto day trip. We did quite a lot of shit, we basically succeeded in everything that we wanted to do/see/buy/eat, probably the most ambitious travel/tourism day since we technically visited 4 different locations but we managed to not die and walked a lot of it. Man, pretty tiring but that’s just the way Kyoto is, lots of walking, just like Osaka, but worse.
We are probably going to take a new chill day in Osaka tomorrow and sleep in cause we are exhausted after Kyoto, so not sure what we’ll do. We are on the home stretch for this trip so I hope I recover fully before I go home.