The posts and summary for the whole trip, can be found here
♥November 25th Monday♥
This is how our room in Sakura looks like. Every night when we got back, we had to lay our futons out and put on the sheets ourselves (sheets were always folded and not laid on the futon after the room was cleaned) and after we woke up, we would fold the futons and put them at the side so we have some space in the room.
We'd stayed in 2 other Japanese style rooms later part of this trip, and the futons were always laid out for us.
That day we decided to do some city tour. We were told by the staff at the hotel to bring along an umbrella as it would rain later.
We took a bus to visit Nijo Castle 二条城 (Nijojo).
From Japan-guide.com : Nijo Castle was built in 1603 as the Kyoto residence of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Edo Period (1603-1867).
Entrance ticket was purchased via a ticketing machine (￥600 adults, ￥200 children).
Zaria trying zen sand drawing. She wrote 我要回家 (I want to go home), she actually meant going back to the hotel!
To be honest, I didn't think this was a nice castle to visit. The landscaping isn't that great, and the castle building itself wasn't that interesting. The girls however did learn about the nightingale flour (uguisu-bari), which was a security measure to prevent people sneaking around undetected.
And just as the weather forecast, it started pouring when we finished our tour at the castle. We took the bus and headed to Kawaramachi 河原町 as we have plans to visit the Nishiki Market 錦市場. Because of the rain, for lunch, we picked the first restaurant that we came across, and lucky us, it's this super nice Udon restaurant Omen うどん, we all ordered set lunches except Zaria who wanted grilled chicken.
Their chili pepper came in a variety of 'flavours'.
Here is what we got for lunch.
We had a walk about around the departmental stores at Kawaramachi, i.e. Takashimaya, Kyoto Marui, just because we couldn't walk on the street under that weather.
When the rain subsided to a drizzle, we walked to Nishiki Market 錦市場 or Nishiki Ichiba, a 400 years old market located on a road near Kawaramachi, and runs perpendicular to Teramachi Street 寺町通 (a covered shopping street), it is renowned as the place to obtain many of Kyoto's famous foods and goods.
There's a small but busy temple at Nishiki, 錦天滿宮 Nishiki Tenmangu.
The rest of the market, is shops after shops selling food stuff (ready to eat, ingredients), tea, kitchen utensil.
And for a female, when in Kyoto, a visit to Yojiya よーじや is a must, a famous Kyoto cosmetic/skin care brand.
Not that I bought much from the shop as I try to stick to natural skin care/cosmetic these days.
We wanted a yakitori (grilled chicken) dinner on that cold wet day, so we walked about to search for one; again, it was a lucky find, we went to Yaoki 八百起, which has pretty good food and drinks (the hubs like their Sake, I like their Sawa サワー, i.e. shochu and soda added with fruit juice).
After dinner, the rain finally stopped! We walked back to the hotel.
♥November 25th Monday♥
This is how our room in Sakura looks like. Every night when we got back, we had to lay our futons out and put on the sheets ourselves (sheets were always folded and not laid on the futon after the room was cleaned) and after we woke up, we would fold the futons and put them at the side so we have some space in the room.
We'd stayed in 2 other Japanese style rooms later part of this trip, and the futons were always laid out for us.
That day we decided to do some city tour. We were told by the staff at the hotel to bring along an umbrella as it would rain later.
We took a bus to visit Nijo Castle 二条城 (Nijojo).
From Japan-guide.com : Nijo Castle was built in 1603 as the Kyoto residence of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Edo Period (1603-1867).
Entrance ticket was purchased via a ticketing machine (￥600 adults, ￥200 children).
Zaria trying zen sand drawing. She wrote 我要回家 (I want to go home), she actually meant going back to the hotel!
To be honest, I didn't think this was a nice castle to visit. The landscaping isn't that great, and the castle building itself wasn't that interesting. The girls however did learn about the nightingale flour (uguisu-bari), which was a security measure to prevent people sneaking around undetected.
And just as the weather forecast, it started pouring when we finished our tour at the castle. We took the bus and headed to Kawaramachi 河原町 as we have plans to visit the Nishiki Market 錦市場. Because of the rain, for lunch, we picked the first restaurant that we came across, and lucky us, it's this super nice Udon restaurant Omen うどん, we all ordered set lunches except Zaria who wanted grilled chicken.
Their chili pepper came in a variety of 'flavours'.
Here is what we got for lunch.
We had a walk about around the departmental stores at Kawaramachi, i.e. Takashimaya, Kyoto Marui, just because we couldn't walk on the street under that weather.
When the rain subsided to a drizzle, we walked to Nishiki Market 錦市場 or Nishiki Ichiba, a 400 years old market located on a road near Kawaramachi, and runs perpendicular to Teramachi Street 寺町通 (a covered shopping street), it is renowned as the place to obtain many of Kyoto's famous foods and goods.
There's a small but busy temple at Nishiki, 錦天滿宮 Nishiki Tenmangu.
The rest of the market, is shops after shops selling food stuff (ready to eat, ingredients), tea, kitchen utensil.
And for a female, when in Kyoto, a visit to Yojiya よーじや is a must, a famous Kyoto cosmetic/skin care brand.
Not that I bought much from the shop as I try to stick to natural skin care/cosmetic these days.We wanted a yakitori (grilled chicken) dinner on that cold wet day, so we walked about to search for one; again, it was a lucky find, we went to Yaoki 八百起, which has pretty good food and drinks (the hubs like their Sake, I like their Sawa サワー, i.e. shochu and soda added with fruit juice).
After dinner, the rain finally stopped! We walked back to the hotel.
I bought myself one as a souvenir.
