Kyoto: 🍁🍁🍁
Mäneka
While we had seen some leaves at Nagoya Castle and Mt. Takao, today’s goal was to see peak leaves! When we arrived at Kyoto station we were apprised of the current leaf situation.
As you can see Tofukuji was at peak so we decided to head there. Unfortunately, so did every other tourist in Kyoto, apparently. Last time Balaram said that the Arashiyama bamboo forest was the Disneyland of Kyoto, but Tofukuji during momiji season I think takes the cake. There are throngs stopping everywhere to pose and take selfies.
Despite this, the leaves are beautiful, but are difficult to capture on film.
The temple also had a beautiful Zen gravel garden.
We had made a dinner reservation that night at Jiki Miyazawa, a kaiseki restaurant. It has 10 seats in a row at a wooden bar, behind which the chef and two assistants prepare the courses. We were seated at the very end and in front of us was a small grill on which they were toasting monaka.
Sesame tofu is a signature dish. It’s toasted and becomes marshmallow-like with a crispy skin and fluffy innards. The tofu is topped off with a sesame sauce and a sprinkling of sesame seeds. It’s sesame on sesame on sesame and is very good.
They were very into aging their ingredients and almost every course was presented with a description of how long they had been aged for. The tuna was aged for a week and the persimmon for three months. We did not quite know what this aging entailed, but this explanation was provided to us. The tuna was remarkably flavorful.
Linda was into their variety of ceramic dishes and also found all of the staff to be attentive, welcoming, and friendly. The food was creative and tasty. Our only concern was that one of the cooks seemed to be a little sniffly, but we seem to have come out unscathed so far.
Our other activity for the day had been the temple flea market. While I enjoy a flea market, I find hour of slow shuffling in close proximity to others be to exhausting. We found some cute souvenirs and tried some amazing kombu dashi. Our other purchase was a bag full of extremely cheap mikans, only 500 yen for a big basket. Mom was allowed to buy only half of one for 250 yen, which amounted to 15 or so oranges. Quite the steal. I will also mention that there were some cute pigeons at this temple.