Konnichiwa Kyoto!

Higashi Honganji Temple

After such a lovely day yesterday, it was hard to get back to the reality of moving to our next city. We had to go back to begrudgingly knocking around our luggage on the streets as we tried to keep it relatively still on the raised sidewalks and navigating the trains with that luggage. Even worse?? Navigating Kyoto Station with luggage. Oh my lord I have never been so angry at a place before. The station is humungous and absolutely riddled with stairs; finding an escalator anywhere was a worthless endeavor. It was not only miserable because we had the luggage we now had to lift and climb with, but also at the end of very long days in Kyoto we then had to further torture our muscles and aching feet just to get to the train home. And then usually stand the whole way on the train too. The only place in Japan I actively hated. But hey, at least they had a food hall that was out of this world.

Underneath Kyoto Tower, attached to the Kyoto Station, is a place called "Kyoto Sando" a food hall filled with more eateries than you could shake a stick at. Seriously (not seriously), I tried, I had to stop shaking it because my arm hurt. Is that what that phrase even means? I don't know. But what I do know is that I wanted to eat everywhere here! I ended up getting a meal set from the dumpling spot, Gyoza Sukemasa, that included rice, some sort of salad, 6 gyoza (the dumplings) and a sauce for dipping them, edamame, and miso soup for maybe like $12? Bestie took the advice of a man at this bar called "The Roots of All Evil" who was hyping up the chicken spot right next to the bar called "Fried Chicken and Highball LINK" and, yes, we both did get a highball from them. It was not my favorite. The food hall had so many things to choose from though- yakisoba, sake, bubble tea, desserts, steak, Chinese, Korean, yakiniku (grilled meat on skewers), pancakes, udon, ice cream, you name it! I also got a waffle I believe topped with ice cream and kinako powder (roasted soybean powder) with a side of fresh whipped cream and berries. When my belly is happy, I am happy!

After getting some food in our bellies, we were back to sightseeing even though it was a bit late for that. We meandered around, finding a temple that was closed for the day but looked really pretty from the outside, so we took some pictures any way. And we made our way back to our "favorite" station to head up the Kyoto Tower to see the city at night.

Our AirBnb in Kyoto was super cute, and a little scary due to the staircase being incredibly steep with just the narrowest stairs. It had a pretty open floor plan and two levels and was pretty traditional in certain aspects like tatami mats in the rooms, house slippers to be worn throughout, pillows to sit on and futons to sleep. The bathrooms were very modern though as was the small kitchen and the fact that there was air conditioning. Each room also had a small balcony where we'd hang our clothes to dry while we were out, we were very thankful that this place also had a 2-in-1 washer/dryer combo...only we couldn't figure out the dryer part so it was mother nature to the rescue! In Tokyo we only had a room in an apartment building and it was itty bitty. Just a big ol' bed, a counter for the sink and to make your tea or coffee, and a bathroom, but it did the trick since we were really only home to sleep anyway. It was also near a Daiso and a 100 Yen shop, both of which we never checked out because we left too early in the morning and got home too late at night. Oh well. Oh! And the bathtub? Totally controlled by the panel on the wall. You set the water temp and how high you wanted to fill the tub and it just...did it's thing. This took a little trial and error to get right though.