Japan: Kyoto Day 3- Snowcones and Beans.

Ok, so this post will be written about a week after these events occurred, but hey, I still wanted to document our travels, so here I am, sitting during parent/teacher conferences, trying to transport myself back in time one week, while keeping one eye out for approaching parents and their middle school children.... I'm probably in good shape, though, since very few Korean parents are actually interested in stopping by the Drama teacher's table....

So here we go, back to Kyoto.  

We woke up on Wednesday, our last full day in Kyoto, to an absolutely beautiful morning- clear, dry, and, as the day progressed, extremely hot.  As Aliana took her morning nap, I set out to grab breakfast.  This has become our morning routine (if 2 days in a row can constitute routine?)  

But first, a little backstory: sitting on the bullet train on our way to Kyoto on Monday, Mike turned to me and said, "Have you ever been to New Orleans?"  (even after 3+ years, we're still learning about each other) After I responded in the negative, he went on: "All I want right now is a cafe au lait from the Cafe du Monde". (and proceeded to expound on the bit of heaven that is an au lait from the Cafe du Monde) "You have to get one someday- they are incredible- the perfect combination of creamy and sweet and wonderful goodness" (ok, so I may be paraphrasing here, but it went something like that) And then we got off the train and there it was: in the middle of the Kyoto Station.  A little bit of New Orleans in Japan... a Cafe du Monde.  Coincidence?  I think not.  God is good and knew that we could use whatever pickmeups we could get after another night in bed with our 7-month-old.  

So needless to say, we'd both been dreaming about our cafe au laits... it had become our morning routine.  So I went off to get our coffees and incredible pastries from one of the many bakeries in the station (and drop about $25 in the process, but again, who's counting?) and brought them back to our hotel room.  We indulged while Aliana slept.  

Looks good, right?  Yeah.  They were.  And each day, more pastries found their way into our hotel room.  I definitely could use one right now, sitting in this gym under the florescent bulbs listening to the teachers around me try to explain how a B+ in the 6th grade does not mean that your child's academic career is over. 


Meanwhile, back in Kyoto...

Once Aliana woke ready to face this beautiful day, we headed out to hop on a bus to the Golden Pavilion.  Apparently everyone else touring Kyoto had the same idea and decided to hop on the same bus, so we somehow found room enough to stand, (although Mike and Aliana eventually got offered a seat) and we remained on that sweaty bus for the next 45 minutes.  Eventually we and the rest of the bus riders got coughed at our stop and we followed the crowds toward the Golden Pavilion.  It was beautiful and photo-worthy, so here are some shots. 

Jeez, Aliana, I've got it.  Point taken.  Your arms look better than mine.  (You'd think that after 7 months of carrying this chunk around, they'd look better...)

We did some (very quick) sight-seeing around the Golden Pavilion, but Aliana wasn't so into it.  She really wanted to eat.  As. soon. as. was. humanly. possible.  And we looked for a bench, but the closest we could come to that was a (pricey) red cloth and umbrella/green tea and tea cakes break.  We thoroughly enjoyed our overpriced tea.  And Aliana loved her milk.  And all of the attention from everyone else who was also enjoying overpriced tea.  

The tea was in the dark bowls.  Pea-green and frothy.  Mike thought the teacakes tasted just like Peeps.  And that our tea stop was a bit like Easter.  I thought they were a lot better than Peeps.  

We ended up spending the most time at the touristy shops on the way out.  They had a lot of free samples of yummy treats.  We bought a bunch of sweet treats for the ladies who take care of Aliana in the nursery.  

After leaving the Golden Pavilion, we spent quite a bit of time searching for the bus that would take us to our next stop: The Bamboo Forest.  Friends of ours had been to Japan just last year and had some great pics of the bamboo, so we decided we needed to see it for ourselves.  We eventually found the right bus traveling in the correct direction, changed to another bus in the middle of nowhere and finally ended up in (what I think was) the Sagano-Arashiyama area...  By the time we got out of the bus, we were all exhausted, starving and ready for lunch.  We wandered in the heat from restaurant to restaurant, (searching for one where you could eat on the floor so we could put Aliana down for a nap while we ate...?) but when, after about 10 minutes of crying she finally just gave up and fell asleep in my arms as we rushed from place to place with the sweat dripping down our backs, we figured it was time to just enter any restaurant that had the a/c blasting.  We found one, I nursed Aliana back to sleep, (and as I was doing so, the woman waiting on us was curious as to what was going on under my hooter-hider so she nearly took it off me...)  When Aliana was asleep again, we put some chairs together, laid her down, ordered our cold soba noodles and let the cool air dry our sweat.  

We spent a lot of time in that little 5-table restaurant, waiting for Aliana to finish her nap, and enjoyed every minute.  We even felt adventurous enough to try out a dish that we saw another woman eating for desert.  It was basically like a large green-tea snowcone topped with red beans.  Hey, don't knock it til you've tried it.  Beans and snowcones.  Who knew?

yum.

Cool and rested, we headed out into the heat of the afternoon for the Bamboo Forest.  We all had a great time walking the calm, serene and green Bamboo path.  It was a bit surreal.  And very beautiful.

We felt like we had to whisper as we walked down the path...

...but then reality set back in and we had to find another place to change Aliana... which this time ended up being on the ground.

 
 And while Mike changed her, I stalked some beautiful women in stunning kimonos.

 ...all the time wondering how they were remaining so impossibly put together not simply passing out from the heat in all of their gorgeous silk?

We then headed back into town and found another fabulous sashimi and tempura dinner, and Mike took off to see Crazy For You in Japanese.  To his disappointment, he was not called up on stage during the tap number.  Aliana and I headed home and to bed.  


All in all, a great last full day in Japan. 

Japan: Kyoto Day 2- Torii Gates Day

Ok, so ever since I first saw pics of Kyoto, I've wanted to see the bright orange torii gates of the Fushimi Inari Shrine, so naturally, that was going to be our first day.  We made the (extremely wise) decision to leave the stroller in our hotel room for the day, stuffed Aliana (she is a chunk, if you haven't already noticed) into her Moby wrap, headed over to the station and hopped on the JR line to the Inari stop.  As soon as we got on the train, it started raining, but I was determined not to let that slow us down... about 7 minutes later we arrived at our stop and followed the bright orange posts to the shrine.  

Just about as soon as we found the first row of gates, the skies cleared, and I was a very happy girl.  

I was amazed at the detail on each of the posts, and how beautifully the green all around us complemented the bright orange of the gates. 

Ok, so bear with me, I went a little nuts on gate pics.

but really, how could I resist?  They were beautiful.  We all loved them.

These were cool, but we don't know what they were about... any thoughts?

As we were walking up the mountain through the gates, we came across a bunch of Korean tour groups who loved taking pics of Aliana.  One group even gave her a fan (we were all drenched with sweat at this point), so the following is her Memoirs of a (Shy Baby) Geisha photo shoot.  (piece of trivia- a scene from the movie was filmed here!)

As we were climbing the hill, a Korean tour guide who wanted to practice his English offered to take our picture, so here is our token family photo:

Here I was trying to keep a mosquito off her toes.

At this point, Aliana decided she needed a little refreshment and so did we.  We fortunately found a little tea shop a bit further up and Mike and I had sodas while Aliana nursed. 









We eventually made it to (what we decided was) the top of the mountain, where you could see the sprawling city of Kyoto...

...and then headed back down, stopping at a few shrines on the way...

Aliana loves hangin with her crazy daddy.

 We quickly decided to head back to Kyoto for lunch at the station... and in the A/C.  Again, we lucked out with a wonderful tempura and sashimi lunch on the floor, and Aliana enjoyed her pureed pears.  

Sometimes, it's so great not to be a baby.

 


A few hours and a nap later, we headed back out to explore Kyoto on foot, and came across a beautiful temple. 

Aliana loved taking a break on the cool temple floor.

and then we got told by one of the guards that there were no pictures allowed in that area of the temple... at least it was post photo-shoot.  

Aliana did so well in Kyoto.  I think she was ready to see the orange gates, too.  She handled the sweat dripping from her face without protest, whereas her mom was a bit more vocal about it....  

Aliana's eating habits have changed a bit on our travels... At home, we just make all of Aliana's food, as we have yet to find cheap baby food options in Korea... we're not so sure what Korean babies eat- kimchi?  We spent a fortune on a ton of imported baby food to take with us on this trip - the same brands we know in the states, and bought enough for a week, but Aliana really hasn't liked it very much... a few bites and she's over it.   The afternoon that these pictures were taken, she just wanted to take her spoon with her everywhere.  As we were crossing the street, an older Japanese women looked incredibly concerned about Aliana's spoon- maybe worried that she'd gag herself with it?  I certainly wasn't going to take it away from her.  She was holding onto it for dear life. 


...that is, until she dropped it off the ledge of the temple.  

Mike had to climb down past some very confused construction workers to get it back.  


We spent the rest of the afternoon strolling through the streets of Kyoto while the heat of the day began to cool...


More tomorrow!