June 19: Last Full Day in Kyoto
Monday, October 13th, 2008 Lunch in the Neighborhood
I woke up to the sound of rain. That made it easier to stay inside and write postcards. Around 11:00, I decided it was time to drag myself out of the guesthouse. Coincidentally, the rain stopped around then. Kazo gave me directions an udon noodle place nearby that was good and cheap. He described the different types of udon noodle choices, and when I told him what kind I would want he wrote the name down in English for me. The udon noodle house has no English menus or English-speaking servers, so this was crucial. I enjoyed the walk through the suburban neighborhood of coffee shops, supermarkets, and clothing stores. The udon house had the ambience of an American diner, and the food was cheap—only 400 yen! I was satisfied.
The Long Walk
I followed Kazo’s directions into the Daitokuji complex, and from there meandered around the temple grounds. The combination of wood and gravel and stone and bamboo and grass was impressive. No one was charging money either. I found my way back to the main street (Daitokuji-Dori), and started walking towards the Shimogamo Shrine. Along the way I stopped at Boulangerie L’Etranger, the only French bakery I saw with a counter to sit and have coffee. The pastries were also the most artistic I’d seen so far. It was expensive (the coffee and Danish cost more than lunch), but the older woman who prepared and served the coffee was so kind and her movements were as slow and deliberate as if she were conducting a tea ceremony. That plus the view of old world breads made it an aesthetically pleasing place to be.
I finally made it to Shimogamo Shrine. I was reaching my saturation point with shrines. The park attached to the shrine, however, was very green and very peaceful, and worth the walk. I continued on from there to the Kyoto Imperial Palace Park. It had endless low yellow walls with grey awnings lining huge, wide, gravel-stoned avenues. The stony expanse of it was exhausting for me. Most of it was closed, too. Only an information center was open.
After walking through the whole park, I started heading back towards Horikawa street to catch the bus home. I’m not sure which little side street I was on, but I passed a restaurant with some plastic displays of food that looked interesting and that I hadn’t tried before. I went in and discovered that it was a quasi-fast food restaurant. You go in and choose your dish from a vending machine. You press the button, put in your money (in my case, about 700 yen), and out comes a ticket. You give the ticket to the cook, and she prepares your meal. I had a bowl of rice topped with a fried pork cutlet topped with a cooked egg. It was good, but the unusual vending machine experience really made the meal.
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