Day Six: To Kyoto and Yoshiko's House!

Yesterday, we got up in the morning to leave for Kyoto. Getting up early hasn't been hard, particularly for me, since I seem to be unable to totally switch to this time zone. I keep waking up at 6 or 6:30 am, and then I am totally ready to crash by about 9 pm. I went to bed later last night, close to 11, but here I am, wide awake at 6:30 again. Jon is still sawing logs.

Jon + bigbackpack @ Kyoto Stn.

Yesterday morning's big challenge was to fit all of our new purchases into our backpacks. I am going to build some serious muscle on this trip carrying all this stuff around! On our way to the train station, we grabbed fruit from a fruit stand. I hadn't had any fresh fruit in days (I normally eat fruit almost every day) and so I pretty much ate a small carton of (ripe, juicy) strawberries myself on the trip. I didn't get any photos of the scenery because we were going by too fast (somewhere between 200 and 300 km/hour). The view was nice though, and became more rural, green and mountainous as we got closer to Kyoto. The only unfortunate part of the ride was the two small wailing and seat-kicking children sitting behind us. If I knew how to say "stop kicking my seat" in Japanese, I probably would've said it. Most children we've seen here have been fairly sedate, but not those ones.

Me eating a Yuba roll.

The train station in Kyoto is incredible. It's all glass and so there's lots of light. Inside and below the station proper there are tons of different stores, including a huge deli area with different counters selling bento boxes, ready-to-steam vegetable and fish baskets and all kinds of salads (which you have to be careful about here because what looks like noodles is sometimes tentacles or small fish). It was quite the spectacle. Jon and I ended up buying our lunch there (salads and Yuba rolls - rice wrapped in a thin "tofu skin" which is essentially the skin that forms on top of soy milk, fried) and sitting on a bench to eat it. Yuba are a good vegetarian option, because most seem to not have meat in them.

Curious school kids & chaperon.

On our way out of the station, a bunch of schoolchildren, probably on a day trip, asked to take a picture of Jon and I. They took a picture of us, and we took a picture of them (both with their cameras and ours). They were pretty excited about it. Then, on our way to the hostel, as we stopped to look at our map and try to get oriented, we were approached by a tiny woman who asked if she could help us with directions. When we told her the name of our hostel, she said she would take us there, because it is close to her house. She dropped us right at the door of the hostel, and not only that, she insisted we come for dinner. Jon and I looked at each other to confirm that we were both ok with that plan, and then we told her sheepishly that we'd love to but that we're vegetarian and we didn't know if that would be a problem. The woman, Yoshiko, said that would be no problem, and that she would come and pick us up at 6:30. We didn't know whether this was a regular occurrence or not but we thought it would be a great experience to have supper in someone's home.

Yoshiko and the meal she's about to cook!

Yoshiko showed up promptly to take us to her place, which is about a block away. For dinner, she cooked vegetables (2 kinds of greens, squash, enoki and shiitake mushrooms), fried and fresh tofu and konyakku and soba noodles at the table in a shallow electric pot in separate courses. At the end, she added rice to the pot to soak up all the leftover broth, along with the remaining vegetables (which were a formidable pile to begin with) and mixed in egg to hold it all together. She insisted we eat a lot, so we were both very full by the end! Yoshiko also gave us some dashi (seaweed-based broth) powder packets to take home with us so we can try making our own soup the way she did.

Yoshiko adds tofu.

I am not sure how old Yoshiko is. She works as an assistant to people with visual impairments and children with disabilities. She kept excusing her English, but it was actually quite good. She was impressed with our chopstick abilities, so we told her we use them at home, too. Yoshiko seems to collect friends from different places, because she told us about friends of hers who live in Toronto, who are from Hong Kong, and showed us pictures of her and a couple from Switzerland, whom she befriended when they were visiting. She likes movies and Johnny Depp and she said that she would like to come and visit Toronto (she has been to Vancouver before). Yoshiko is having a dinner party on Saturday, and she invited us. That will be interesting because apparently her friends don't speak English. Chance to practice my three phrases of Japanese! (Jon is faring much better than I language-wise). She also told us about a vegetarian restaurant a friend of hers owns, so we are going to try to go there. (She phoned the friend up while we were there to tell him/her we'd be coming!)

Our hostel is really nice. We have a shared bathroom here, but there is also a big kitchen available for guest use, so that's a nice advantage. We went out and bought groceries yesterday (an experience in itself!) and so we're going to try cooking here to save some money. We're also missing home foods, much as we like Japanese cuisine. We paid through the nose for Prego and Old Elpaso Taco shells (imported items; they wrapped the Prego in bubble wrap so we wouldn't loose our valuable purchase!) so that we can make tacos and spaghetti for ourselves.

Us @ Yoshiko's