He Says - home at last

It feels really good to be home, even if that does mean going back to work. Slowly working my way through jet lag now.  Was up at 5:30am this morning and couldn't sleep, but at least I got into work early to catch up on my emails from 2 weeks.

The 12.5 hour flight from Tokyo to Washington went by like a breeze oddly enough.  I was prepared for it enough and distracted enough with things I brought not to notice too much.

The 1 hour flight from Washington to Philly was a hot, sticky, nausiating hell, however, but at least it was short.  Seated at the very back of what amounts to a pencil of an airplane is not fun.

I'd like to thank everyone who read the blog and offered their support.

I'd very much like to thank my parents for the ride to and from the airport, and the wonderful food they provided us on our return so we wouldn't have to go shopping the minute we got back.

Thanks to Deya and Chris for their wonderful hospitality.  Really one of the highlights of our trip.

And, of course, thanks to Helen for being a wonderful travel partner on this adventure.

She says: Ah hah!

There was a question that was bugging us for a lot of our trip to Japan. We saw Wendy's. We say McDonald's. We even saw multiple Denny's restaurants and at least one Sizzler. But there was never any Burger Kings to be found anywhere.

We think we now know why.



While on Okinawa we bandied about the idea of a "Burger Shogun" and hypothesized on the popularity of the "Little Ronin's Meal" complete with a toy and a cheeseburger.
It could be big, you guys. Really, really big.

She says: Yatta!

We are home and experiencing the fun that comes with both jet lag and time change. We endeavored to stay awake but only managed to long enough to get home and take showers to clean off the plane-ick. Then around 4 pm we passed out HARD.
Our last full day in Tokyo was a fun one. It was raining again, so we decided to stay local and ran around in Shinjuku. We played in the Sega arcade once more, and Bob thoroughly routed me not only in Mario Kart, but also in Taiko Drummer. It's like Rock Band except you have drums instead of a guitar. And trust me, it's no less hard.)
we played Typing of the Dead, pachinko, and a plinko-type game that used silver coins instead of plastic disks to drop down. We played the UFO catchers again and failed hard core, and then moseyed out to wander the neighborhood.
We saw a lot of fun stuff, goofed around a lot, then went back to the hotel and packed everything we wouldn't need for the morning. Dinner was at the Glass Court where we sampled many bits of lots of different things. I had my last taste of fresh octopus carpaccio and must admit that it is a taste that will be missed. We just don't do it right in this country.
After dinner we went up and said goodbye to the Tokyo skyline in the Aurora Lounge, watching the lights showing against the dark and misty night.
I was feeling more generous towards Tokyo at that point. We'd met several friendly people who were pleased we were enjoying ourselves, and seen a larger cross section of Tokyo's populace thanks to a train ride and an accidental wrong turn in Nakano trying to find the Ainu restaurant. It was becoming obvious that we were seeing the product of a highly internalized society, at odds with our own outgoing, extroverted society. What we'd been missing this whole time was the subtlety with which they displayed their personalities, their colors, their sounds, even their smiles. To them it was probably just as vibrant and colorful as a mardi gras parade, because they knew to be quiet and observe. We, distracted travelers, kept missing it. Until it rained, and for some reason that brought all the colors out and we could see what they did all the time.
So as we sat there looking out over the dancing neon lights and tired rooftops of Shinjuku and southward we talked about what we would miss and the differences we had noted. We had drinks and relaxed and watched the red warning lights blink on the top of the skyscrapers to warn helicopters and planes in the dark. It was beautiful and a lovely end to the trip.
The flight back wasn't quite as bad this time because we knew what to do to keep ourselves entertained, and we did so with great ferociousness.
Bob folks were nice enough to pick us up at the end of the whole thing and even set us up with stuffed shells for dinner and makings for sandwiches. Seeing as we completely emptied the fridge before we left and had no food, it was an awesome surprise. We didn't have to stumble out when we finally woke up to try and acquire food while starving.
Thanks to everybody who read this while we overseas. We may post a few extra things over the next few days to wrap up, so don't abandon us completely yet!
Special thanks to Chris and Deya for letting us hang out with them on Okinawa which, yes, was STILL the best part of the trip and you guys still have to watch Destination Truth when you get a chance. Josh Gates look like a frat-house douche, but he's seriously funny. Heck, I recommend everybody go take a look for the same reason.
Domo arigato gozaimasu and Sayonara, everyone. :)

She says: Kiyomizu

I don't think we went over Kiyomizu, which we went to on Wednesday.
Given that today we're willing to call it good and just venture out briefly to the local shops to get the last few bits of Japanish stuff... and also to find a yakitori-ya before we go... there probably won't be much else to blog unless you guys are dying to hear about the cellular death of our hind ends due to sitting for 14 hours. (We're trying to figure out how to say "Benadryl" in Japanese so we can take it and knock ourselves out for a good part of it.)
So, yes... Kiyomizu.
Every photo you have seen of a 3-tiered pagoda with a circular ringed pole coming out of the top of it is this place. It is a matter of great pride to the point that everyone we talked to, able to speak English or not, talked about it or asked if we had seen it. I'll be honest, I had read about it but wasn't too curious. I was too intrigued with the city proper and worried about walking in to a tourist trap.
But Tuesday night, coming back from our fantastic kaiseki meal, I realized I wasn't ready to leave yet and wanted to do something else. So we set up our room for a late check-out, and the next morning we grabbed a cab out to it.
Now, they asked us if we wanted to take the cab up to the entrance, or to be dropped off at the "short path" that led up to it. We said oh, we want to see the path, we're all about the local color.
And then they dropped us off at the foot of a street (NOT A PATH) that was at least a 30% incline the entire way up to the temple, about a quarter of a mile up the side of the mountain. It was hell, and it was scenic with lots of cute little shops that we only partially paid attention to as we huffed and puffed our way up this steep hill.
Once up there, though, it was beautiful. From the balcony off the side of the temple proper you could see the whole of the valley and most of Kyoto, with the Kyoto Tower poking up from near the train station in the distance.
Kiyomizu, as mentioned, was built in to the side of a mountain. It was easy to imagine walking for a day from the old downtown Kyoto to get there, through thick woods, or riding a horse up there as it was so remote. But these days it is a quick train or cab ride and a short walk to be there in that stunning location.
It's obviously popular, as every shop sells the same thing, or a variation of the same thing from top to bottom, with a few spare unique shops that sold hand-carved buddhas or dragons, or hand-made pottery.
There was an interesting mix of Shinto and Buddhist belief at Kiyomizu, with some definite Shinto influence in the pagodas and smaller shrines in the area. There were the Lover's Stones, which we walked between (Bob helped me, so it was a bit of a cheat but okay since he's the one I love.) and shrine maidens manning places to sell you talismans at a moment's notice, in case you suddenly realized you were a bad driver, a bad student, or terribly unlucky at love.
Once you reached the temple proper, however, the bright colors died and it was the color of blackened lacquer, dark eaves and time-worn wood. No bright oranges or turquoises or greens here, the focus was on the Kwan Yin there and the prayer. it made for a surprising comparison in the viewing and photos.
I'll leave you all to read the article as it explains in depth what would take me forever to do. We drank fro mteh 3 fountains, picked up a few final souvenirs, enjoyed a walk through the trees and ferns there, and then finally being willing to say goodbye, we made our way back to the hotel and checked out.
A few minutes and a crazy taxi ride later and we were dropped off at the JR rail station. A 2 hour Shinkansen ride later and we were once again in Tokyo, Shinjuku Ward, and fording the human sea of people.
For a look at Kiyomizu, though, give a click here.
It's interesting. I must completely recall my comment of the city as being "gray" for some reason in the weather the colors are coming out more now. maybe they were there and the sun wasso bright I spent my time squinting and not looking. But now the umbrellas, the purses, the scarves and jewelry all flash bits of color. When we got out and away from the waves of salarymen and women the teens and twenty somethings sported T-shirts with colorful logos and pastel shades. So... it is not Tokyo that is gray. It is Shinjuku that is gray, and its workers. Tokyo itself when it is not in the midst of getting to employment is awash in flashes of brightness and lights and levity. I wonder if I did us a disservice by choosing a hotel here and making this our first impression of the country. Too late now, but I am very glad that it did decide to rain these past few days to give us that other view of what it's like, and the sneak peak at personal preference via rain hoods or umbrella shades.
By the way, they have some awesome umbrellas here. Some made of lace and embroidery just for the sun (which the women use liberally) and some with great patterns that hold off the rain. It caught me off guard to see them both.
Here are the photos from Nekobukuro for those interested.
Time to run out and start the day. Lunch and a quick run through some local shops in the misty rain. Let me share with you:

He says: Day 13

It's our last day in Tokyo and we're going to start this one out slowly. Breakfast, blogging, reading the newspaper and watching the rain in Tokyo. It's actually so cloudy/foggy here that we cannot see a skyscraper that is 3 blocks away from our 32nd floor window.

It's amusing because normal business atire is black and gray, but in the rain you see all sorts of different colored umbrellas. Nothing shocking or terrible bright, but it's nice to see blues, greens and some pinks walking the street for a change. As the day itself gets more gray the people get more colorful to achieve balance. It's a nice image.

Let's see, yesterday was a trip to the Tokyo Hands building, which I was lead to believe was a shop for crafting, and indeed it has hand crafted goods and things for making art projects, dresses, woodworking and other crafts. It also had lots and lots of gadgets, from the USB powered Owl that sits on your computer and looks upon you wisely, to the 3ft high Alien statue to the latest in make up. I think at some point they just realized 'what the hell we have all this space, let's fill it up'. It only lacked the 6 floors of computers, cameras and video games most other shops have to make it blend in with all the other department stores. To be honest it was refreshing to see a place without all that tech for a change.

At the top of the Tokyo Hands building is 'Nekobukoro' or 'Cat world' It might be 'Cat Appartments' or 'Catapalooza'. The meaning is the same for us. They had a lot of cats wandering free.

Now the purpose of this takes a bit of background. Space is a premium in Japan, and therefore most Japanese, esepcially young Japanese adults just making their way in a crowded city, live in very small spaces. It's true, I've seen it on TV. Anyway, these spaces are so small and they spend so much time trying to avoid going back to those small, lonely spaces they don't generally have pets. Nekobukoro, like any good business, sees a need and fills it. They have a floor of the department store (Smaller than you'd think, think your average Radio Shack) filled with cats. Anyone can then pay the equivalent of $5-$7 to go in, sit among them, and if they let you, pet them.

There were about 12 cats wandering about. They play, they fight a little, they run from the crazy humans trying to pet them. It's all good fun. They have 'cat skyways' or little planks near the ceiling they can walk around on if they want to avoid the floor to get just about anywhere. They have lots of resting places to look cute in, etc.

What interested me was the demographics. Describe that place to me in the US and I'd tell you it'd be full with a lot of crazy cat ladies who can't ahve cats and some random screaming 12 year old girls with mean parents who won't let them have cats. Actually, not in Japan. The largest demographics was couples. 4 of them when we were there not count us. Mostly late teens to mid twenties. I guess that's their date place. There were a couple single females there dressed in office attire. I pictured them as on their lunch hour and having a bad day at work and wanted to get away and look at something cute for a while that wouldn't give them something stupid to work on in their office. There was one mother/daughter, with the mother being in her 50's and the daughter in her early 30's. Probably their afternoon get together.

...and lastly there were 3 14-ish year old boys. Yes, 14 year old boys in Japan dig cats. One was actually so excited that a cat stopped and let him pet it it that he hurredly took outand handed his cell phone to his friends to take his picture while he posed smiling with it. It was kinda surreal and the distinct lack of 'typical male bonding' by mocking someone enjoying something like that was pretty cool.

After that we went out and hit up some conveyor belt sushi. Literrally, it's a sushi bar with a conveyor belt, and the chefs make sushi, put it on the belt and you remove what you want and eat it. You keep all your dishes and in the end you pay some small amount per dish when you leave. Pretty amusing and innovative, I thought.

After a rest at the hotel for a couple hours to recoup we headed out to our next destination, Nakano to find an authentic Ainu restaurant. I'm sure I'm about to say something horrible un-PC here, but the story I understand of the Ainu is they're kinda like the Native Americans in the US. An original tribe to the area that was basically marginalized, coralled, and 'integrated/assimilated'. I don't believe it was until the late 90's they were even legally recognized as existing.

Anyway, in a fit to see more different things we tracked down the one place in all of Tokyo that serves authentic Ainu food. This, to us, meant "yuk" which translates as "red deer". They serve it both raw and smoked, and with a couple bottles of what they said was an indiginous beer (Tasted like bud light to me but what do I know.) A very tasty meal. There was a bit of a story getting there. We took a wrong turn out of the station for what we knew was a '4 block walk'. And 90 minutes and 4 miles later....we finally found the place. Oh, and it was pouring the whole time.

However, they were pleasant, and I believe shocked to see American's wander in and not demand sushi and tempura. The fact that we knew their native dish, their location and the name of the their tribe seemed to sit very well with them and they took excellent care of us. Some very happy, giggling women sat at a nearby table and one knew pretty decent english and chatted with us for a bit.

We finally got home from our hike/feast around 10pm, grabbed a bottle of $5 sake from the convience store (which was better than the $15 bottle of sake we got at dinner 2 nights ago to my mind) and crashed in our room happy and tired.

On the last day now we've been talking about what we'll miss from here. I think mine is the newness of it all (to me anyway). I like puzzles quite a bit and it's hard not to see all this as a giant game on some level. 'Can I get directions with only minimal command of the language', 'what will I end up eating if I pick the red dish compared to the other red dish on the picture menu', etc. It's a challenge being here in a way it's not at a place you have a full understanding of. To a degree that's a detriment, you can't get in a cab and say 'Take me to your favorite restaurant' and find some place totally new. But overall, i find it a joy. Although if there's a next time coming back here, I'll know more of the language for sure.

This was highlighted to me in Kyoto, where the staff speaks very good english. We also met 3 people who worked there born outside Japan (Canada, Austrailia, and Britain), who therefore knew perfect english. The staf just assumed you wnated to speak in English and greated you that way. IT didn't feel like Japan in the hotel. Outside, sure, but inside you could be anywhere. In Tokyo though, the hotel assumes you at least want to speak Japanese and are willing to switch for complicated concepts. It feels less like hand holding that way.

On one hand it's sad to leave, but on another it'll be very good to be home. On both hands, the 14 hour plane ride will be annoying though. :-)

Random Fun Time Happy-Happy!

Sometimes I worry that there's so much long, drawn-out description that we don't give you enough random factoids about the trip. Because lemme tell ya, we're having a blast and being stupid as it suits us, and for some reason they let us get away with it.
First, I want to introduce two new traveling companions we've picked up. One came from Kiyomizu Temple this morning (No worries, I'll write more about it in the next post, it deserves it) and Stitch-kun, which some of you will probably recognize.
Here are our intrepid little buddies resting in the Tokyo hotel room:
And as you can see, they are having a relatively good time chilling.
The Daruma Hello Kitty caught my eye from across the street on the way down from Kiyomizu this morning and seeing as it combined my love of daruma dolls and Hello Kitty, I scooped it up. If you aren't familiar with Daruma, click here and it'll get you up to speed. He was a cool guy, and they make cool dolls out of him these days. He's the Japanese equivalent of a saint.
And now, on to the random factoids:
~On Okinawa there are pink elves with leather thongs and leaf headdresses set out to denote areas of interest, much like the minehune statues on Hawaii.
~One of our hosts, Chris, will do everything except dig a ditch to avoid getting his picture taken, and that was only because he lacked a shovel. We have photographic evidence of him actively avoiding photos on several occasions.
~Deya is directly at fault for getting me back on my coffee habit, which I had kicked for 6 months before going to Okinawa. Damn you, caramel frappucino, why must you be so tempting and delicious??
~Older Japanese people will smile at you when you smile, but the younger ones look away. I was actually dissed by a baby on the subway in this fashion this morning.
~In Kyoto, Bob and I jumped on the bed for a good two minutes.
~They had no less than 3 native English speakers in Kyoto at our hotel. One was from Scotland, one was from Canada, and the other only ever hailed a cab for us, we never got his story. It was still odd to see.
~Kyoto had more fluent English speakers than Tokyo, despite Tokyo being more "international"
~Shinkansen trains all have a tiny woman pushing a huge snack cart around and on average she will pass you four times each trip, as long as you are going from at least Tokyo to Kyoto or vice versa.
~Lilo & Stitch and Snoopy are extremely popular right now and we keep seeing toys for them everywhere we go (hence Stitch-kun joining our ranks)
~Inari sushi, the pockets of rice in fried tofu, are actually named after the rice god and not the fried tofu they're wrapped in, unlike most sushi. Foxes supposedly love rice wrapped in fried tofu, and statues that show a "ball" instead of "key" are eluding to that fact.
~There is a TV show on TV right now called Mr. Brain sporting a man in a plaid suit with crazy hair. As far as we can see, he's trying to be Dr. Who... except it's a crime drama and there's no Tardis. Mr. Brain currently has been turned in to a cartoon character, and even has his own pastry line. Observe:
Bob tells me it was filled with marshmallow and something that wanted to be peanut butter but wasn't. I tasted it and think it's more like caramel pudding. Either way... it's not good. It's just... not...good.
~You can buy alcohol anywhere in Japan at any time. This includes hard liquor and beer. You can't pick them up out of the ubiquitous vend-o machines, but you can walk in to any quickie mart, super market or drug store and buy beer, even at 8 am. Nobody looks at you funny either way.
~There is a woman selling bento boxes on every Shinkansen platform between Kyoto and Osaka (we can't vouch for anything outside of that.) We have dubbed her the "bento babe". Today she sold us lunch on our way back from Kyoto.
~Tokyo is a very train-centric city, while Kyoto is very taxi-centric. Okinawa is very auto-centric. It's interesting to see the difference in cultures and expectations regarding their transportation.
~Teenagers will make fun of you if you can't balance on the Yamanote line in Tokyo. Older business men will laugh under their breath at you if you can't do it on the Shinkansen.
~If you see someone stumbling around in Kyoto, they may not be drunk. They may be renting a resort kimono and wooden shoes and have no idea how to walk in them. We had to dodge several such instances of this while we were there.
~The sake purchased at the Circle K is sometimes better than the stuff you shell out good yen for at a higher-priced restaurant.
~The Japanese stack their ice cubes in a neat pylon before pouring a drink over them.
~It is perfectly acceptable to grossly discriminate against smokers in Japan. They have mostly been relegated to "smokers aquariums" inside glass rooms or very small areas on a sidewalk in order to indulge in the cancer-sticks.
And finally?
~If you fan yourself with your passport, someone at the front desk will run and get you paper fans covered in tour company promos so you don't appear "ghetto" while in their lobby.

There's more, I'm sure Bob can think of a few. But for now? It's late and it's going to rain in Tokyo. I want to hear the storm hit.

She Says: Back in Tokyo! (Recap!)

So I think we're all forced to face up to the fact that we suck at updates and I sincerely hope people weren't waiting with baited breath to hear about our adventures in Kyoto.
They totally freakin' rawked, btw.
At this point there is a LOT of photos and a lot of smaller details that Bob keeps leaving to me because I apparently remember them better, except that by the time I'm done tagging and uploading photos I'm usually exhausted. So I've started and forgotten 3 posts over the last 3 days, and I want you all to blame Bob for fudging and deciding he wouldn't give a good enough round up. In fact, email him about it. Because that would be funny.
It would appear from the global news that the world is poised to scream its lungs out over Manchester United vs. Barcelona, and we're rooting for ManU just so Spain doesn't have to deal with a riot.
So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give a quick rundown of what we did in Kyoto as best I can remember and link the snot out of wikipedia so you guys can read up on your own for more detail. I'm also going to post links to the albums so you can go take a peak.
Kyoto, Day 2... Johnnie Hillwalker's Kyoto walking tour, inappropriately named. It was Johnnie Hillwalker's stand around in a parking lot or in an active back alley and point at buildings while talking about them lower than most of the group can hear, Tours. We did see the major temple for the Pure Land sect of Buddhism in Japan (currently in a literal dry-dock to protect it from the weather while it's being restored.). We also went on to see a few small shinto shrines and a cemetary as well as a few other craft shops. The shrines and temples interested me. Standing outside a closed bath house made of yellow brick talking about how it's world famous... yet closed... not so much. However, we did get to see that the claim of there being 9,000 shrines and temples in Kyoto is probably accurate and not hyperbole. Also got to see the original headquarters of Nin-Ten-Do... some of you might have seen their products at some time? Super Mario Bros, maybe? Except when they were in their downtown Kyoto headquarters, most of what they made were playing cards. They still do, in fact, and we saw workers carrying them out to delivery trucks as we stood there.
After the sweets shop my feet hurt so bad I couldn't handle standing around listening to Mr. Serious give more talks, so we slipped out and walked the two blocks back to the hotel after finding a place for lunch. It was literally called "Coffee and Lunch" and what they actually meant was "We have coffee. If you gesticulate wildly at the omelette and rice pictured on our menu, we will also make you that, but it's not normal." However, might I say, it was damned good food.
We were so blitzed we crashed and napped (walking and standing for 5 hours will do that for you) then rose to shower and treated ourselves to dinner at the hotel's restaurant.
Y'all... I had grilled calf's liver and a cup of cauliflower soup, and I ~liked~ it. Huzzah for new culinary horizons! Bob had a plate of multiple dead farm animals, labeled the "mixed grill", and it was everything from our fluffy lamb friends to our porcine pals and on to our beefy buds. He tells me right now that the beef was excellent, and says it with shining eyes that tell me he will think back on it and salivate while stuck with PB&J sandwiches in the future.
Aaaand... that was kind of that. Except I believe we made a late-night run down to a Circle K quickie-mart to grab a few small things and just to get out in the beautiful night air.
The next day? Oh, lemme tell you about the next day.
Fushimi Inari Taisha... the mother of all Shinto shrines dedicated to the god of rice, Inari... guarded by the sacred foxes of Inari and so important that they dedicated an entire MOUNTAIN to it. Fushimi Inari Taisha, home of the twenty million orange and black torii doors that you have seen in every guidebook about Japan and Kyoto specifically, even if you didn't know that's what it was. And I have wanted to walk on the paths of Fushimi Inari Taisha ever since I saw an article for it in National Geographic when I was 15-16 years old. I stood there in awe of the thousands of torii and then... I giggled madly. And went everywhere we could without risking life, limb, or being yelled at by the shrine workers.
It was lovely to hike up the mountains early in the morning and I can easily say this was my favorite thing in all of kyoto. There were large toriis and small offering-sized torii everywhere. I could go on, but.... here... just lookit the damn pictures:

Click here for more complete and utter awesomeness.
Fox statues were ~everywhere~ on the mountain, some wrapped in the sacred red cloths they favor, some in decorative brocade... you name it.
Even when we were not under tree cover and in direct sun, the torii were so many that we walked in dappled shade the entire time. It was awe-inspiring, and with that and the beauty of the mountain one could easily see why they loved it so much and held it as sacred.
Hell, I even tossed in a few coins to one of the offering boxes and said a prayer, and even filled out a little fox-faced ema asking for a good life:

(Yes, that IS the infamous "Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo! Konnichiwa!" shirt that gets us stared at every time it's worn.)
This was the Japan I was hoping for and looking for, the one that might be haunted in the evenings as everyone is leaving and where the sheer power of belief kept the ancient gods walking.
Fushimi Inari Taisha, btw, is rare as Shinto shrines go. Shinto gods and spirits do not have images that are worshipped, or even symbols. The kami are strictly spirits that are invisible to human eyes, and usually a space is designated as their home but nothing is in it. Fushimi Inari, though, has Inari's mirror in several of the shrines all over the mountain as a symbol. It is one of the very few that does.
I am actually kicking myself for not snagging a miniature of it, or of the little guardian foxes that flanked it. It would've been awesome and I blew it off thinking "I'm not Shinto, do I really want to dust it?" *sigh* Yeah... I do now...
After we made our way back down off the mountain we stopped at the little shops at the base... shrines and temples are good business, as the tourists stop there and buy items to remember it by. We found many, many nifty gifts. I won't go in to detail here because some of them are Xmas presents. But they are nifty.
Also, Bob found me a lovely pink pearl necklace and snagged it for me, having overheard my desire to have a piece of jewelry to remember the country by. I thought that was really sweet of him.
We had lunch at a small shop where an elderly woman missing her two front teeth kept saying "Hai hai! Dozo, dozo!!" to everything and smiling and waving us to go this way or that with her hands. She served us broiled eel in sweet sauce and oyakodon rice with shrimp tempura and it was stunningly good.
We then headed back to the hotel to sort things and get them packed to send off via takyuubin to Tokyo, and to get ready for the kaiseki meal.
Kaiseki is a specialized feast where the local style of cooking is used to accentuate the flavors of whatever food is in season. It is a luxury that was once reserved for the samurai class and royalty, and now is practiced elsewhere as a more bastardized tradition.
Wanting to have not just good kaiseki, but stuff we could be sure was not some tourist-diluted crap, I hopped online the previous day and began hitting foodie journals to see what they recommended as great locations.
Somewhere in there I found Kichisen, the Kyoto restaurant of one Yoshimi Tanagawa. He is well known in Japan and the US for beating Iron Chef Morimoto in the Iron Chef TV series. Morimoto is big news in the US for the restaurants he's opened in NY and elsewhere. Any man that could beat Morimoto would be more than sufficient to serve us excellent kaiseki.
We got dressed up. I wore a dress, ya'll.... And one harrowing taxi ride later from a man who wasn't sure where he was going and another panicked street crossing and we found ourselves being greeted at the door by one of the wait staff, who knew immediately who we were.
We were escorted in, asked to remove our shoes, and then taken along a beautiful hallway where two of the wait staff knelt and bowed to us, thanking us for coming to their establishment. On the way down the tatami-mat hallway we passed a small dry stone garden with moss and ferns off to the side. It was idyllic and reminiscent of the older Kyoto houses that are slowly disappearing.
A turned corner and one of the kneeling waitstaff bowed again and slide open the rice paper door for us, motioning for us to go in. Once inside, we saw that they had set fresh flowers in the alcove, but the only other things in the room were two chairs, the table, and two smaller side tables that later held the trays. An iron hanger holding a silk brocade shield kept us from viewing the hallway each time they opened the door to check on us or bring food, keeping our complete immersion in the event from being disturbed.
Once there, they spoke to us entirely in Japanese and with hand gestures, and one gentleman who knew enough english to ask us things like Hot? Cold? Okay, arigato... The food was never explained to us in English at any time. We listened as they brought in each dish, pointed to what each thing was, said their piece, nodded, and then they exited so we could enjoy. There is no experience equivalent in the Western world.
I believe we can safely say that there was upwards of 12 different dishes brought in. Everything from sweet peas in a chilled sweet broth to whole grilled fish pickled in white miso before being set out on the hibachi. For that last one, Bob and I looked at each other for a long moment before diving in, at which time the taste was so wonderful that, even having bitten the head off first, I uttered an "Oh!" very loudly in surprise. I would eat those again in a heartbeat even though they looked at us before we chowed down.
We had fish in every imaginable way, along with melons, pickled vegetables, regular vegetables, and fruits. Desert was fresh fruits with a complimentary liquor. I had a ripe fresh passion fruit with the top cut off and the insides so fresh and ripe they could be spooned out like a soup. Bob's was a melon with a type of clear jello in the same shape of the melon and a net of spun sugar and flower blossoms. After ~that~ they brought us bowls of matcha and seemed very pleased that we knew to study the bowls and comment on how beautiful they were before turning the main designs outward so that others could see it. (Who knew the tea ceremony lesson at Shofuso back in Philly would come in useful so soon?)
They followed THAT up with sweetened sticky rice wrapped around sweet red bean paste, then all of that wrapped in a sweetened pickled cherry leaf. The last item was a cup of hot bancha-tea in beautiful cups marked with Kichisen's logo. Then a taxi was called, the hostess came in and gave us the remainder of the rice and steamed fish's-head meat that we didn't have room to consume along with a pair of chopsticks and a gift fan with a beautiful printed golden koi on it to thank us for coming. When the taxi arrived, all 3 of the people who had been waiting on us walked out with us, helped us get our shoes on, thanked us again, then with the front door's attendant, they escorted us down to the taxi and told the driver where we needed to go.
Two things at this point. First: they didn't ask us where we'd come from. They just remembered the hotel from our initial reservation and had looked up the name and address specifically to tell the cab driver.
Second: We were the only ones there for 80% of the meal. There was only one other customer there, and we only knew that because their shoes were by the front door as we left.
It had been my hope that we could have a highly unique and wonderful culinary experience, and this one completely blew Bob and I away. I grinned the whole way home and Bob commented on various parts in between fielding me grabbing for him when our kamikaze cab driver whipped in and out of traffic. (At one point he road the bumper fo the guy who cut him off and flashed his brights...ahh, a bit of home. Japan has road-rage too...)
After that? Yeah. We collapsed. Happily so.