Shopping, food and an occasional garden

Thursday the boys and girls split up.  Andrea and Lisa went out shopping, while Mark and Keith headed down towards Kyoto Station, bagging a temple on the way, making a stop at the temple of electronics (our favorite store - Yodobashi) and going up Kyoto Tower to get a glimpse of the city and environs.  I don't think I have any pictures from the top, but I highly recommend a visit to the tower when you go to Kyoto.  The views are 360 degrees, and you get a sense of the surrounding mountains.  You can also see over to Osaka and get a sense of how close you are to that city.  It was good.

That evening we ate at a little hole in the wall izakaya that Lisa and Andrea had "discovered" earlier in the day.  The Mamoriya.  We got in and there were a table full of men in suits polishing off a fair quantity of beer and sake and having a great time.  The proprietor was delighted to see us, surprised that Lisa and Andrea had made good on their promise to come back.  And he didn't disappoint.  A variety of small dishes, several involving oysters, were consumed that evening, along with a couple of flights of sake.  It was all good, and we got out of there for an incredibly reasonable price.

On Friday, we changed up teams and Lisa and Mark did some major league gift buying, while Andrea and I tooled around the city and ended up going to Daikakuji, a temple up in the Arashiyama District.  There were beautiful gardens and a wild chrysanthemum exhibit.  As Andrea whipped out one of the new cameras she has acquired on the trip to memorialize the event, she realized that the battery was dead.  Ouch.  Undeterred, she whipped out her Japanese mobile phone and used it to take pictures for the event.  I have not been able to get copies of those, but will do so at some point and ad them to the blog.  The gardens were pretty and the Arashiyama area is quite nice.

That evening it was off to a special gyoza place for dinner.  Again this is one where it appeared only to be locals, as we clearly were the only Westerners there.  We tried a variety of different types of gyoza, including one that was yuzu (citrus) flavored.  Very oishii.

I will next try to put together a post of Saturday's adventures on Lisa and Mark's last day in Kyoto.