Oideyasu! Please take off your shoes.
Kyo-kaori (meaning Kyoto fragrance or flavor) tea is a bottled iced tea available since (I think) 2004, with powdered matcha tea from Uji, Kyoto, concealed in a clever double cap. The bottle contains only water, but when you unscrew the top cap, it releases the powdered tea from the green tube into the water, and you have to shake it pretty good to get it to mix thoroughly, but you get that nice matcha flavor in a lighter dose than usual, in refreshing iced tea that feels so good in your throat. Made locally in Minami-ku by Irokuen Tea company. Website (Flash).
This yuba, um, factory, is probably the hottest place in Kyoto, literally. What's yuba? Well, like sausages, it doesn't sound so good if you describe how it's made, but Kyoto cuisine would not be the same without it. Yuba is made by heating up soy milk in big trays, then lifting the skin that forms like that on soup, and hanging it up to dry. They insisted that I tell you that the ones hanging here were from the dregs of the last batch, so they are less tidy than optimal.
When the Umekoji Steam Locomotive Museum was renovated in 1997, the former Nijo Station building, the oldest wooden train station in Japan, dating from the Meiji era, was moved south and installed as the main museum building. Link (off-site) to pictures of new Nijo Station building.
A boys' paradise of sights, sounds and smells. Girls seemed to enjoy it, too. Opened in 1972 on the 100th anniversary of Japanese rail service, Umekoji, next to a large park west of Kyoto Station, was the first SL museum in Japan. The admission is ¥400 for adults (¥100 for students) and ¥200 (¥100) to ride the SL at 11:00, 13:30 and 15:30. website.
the scale, power and sound of these machines is awesome. Video clip.
Click for 1024 X 768 desktop background of revelers carrying a portable mikoshi shrine.
Still quite a few of these kakutou lamps on older merchant buildings in town. Most of them were gas lamps crafted in the Meiji and Taisho eras, and retain the glamor of that age. Now they are electric, or disused and deteriorating.
Shinsen-en is a small remnant of a larger garden belonging to the original heian palace. It is just south of Nijo Castle, across Oike street. The sweet-smelling white and magenta azaleas in bloom for a few weeks before and after Golden Week are a highligt, but it's nice to come here in the dog days of summer because it seems always to be breezy, with waving willow trees and cicadas galore. (I took these pictures with my new cellphone, Toshiba 603T.)
