JAPAN
Japan 2023 Day 19 - Kyoto
Monday my boyfriend and I woke up to get breakfast at the ryokan. This would be a similar experience to the night before but this time presumably breakfast food. It still required some adventurous eating so our friends went off to get their own breakfast.
Afterwards we had time to just relax so we enjoyed the onsen on our balcony for a while. We were able to drink coffee and get ready leisurely for our day out.
By the time we were ready to leave we were hungry again so we ended up getting lunch and our friends met us there. We went to Arashiyama Yoshimura. There’s actually a cluster of restaurants here, we went to the soba restaurant.
I got the duck soba and the duck was so yummy and tender!
Our first stop was the Bamboo Forest which I feel like is one of those things that pops up in “what to do in Japan” guides way TOO much for its own good. It’s not very large for one at something like 2.5 square miles. What’s primarily interesting about it is how wide and tall the bamboo is and how it’s sorta just growing in the midst of city streets. The paths inside are pretty short and it was crowded already in February.
Along the way we came across the Okochi Sanso Garden – we didn’t plan to go in but we were intrigued. It’s up a hill and is a really nice stroll through an old Japanese movie star’s garden.
On our way back to the hotel we checked out the Tenryu-ji Temple. You can pay extra to go into the main hall but since we’ve seen a lot of temples on this trip we didn’t bother.
Finally we got back to our hotel. We booked the private onsen they have there. It’s really cool, you walk through a tunnel under the street to get to the onsen. It’s just like the onsens we’ve been going to but you have the room entirely to yourselves for 45 minutes. Of course since it was just us we could wear swimsuits and talk as loudly as we wanted hehe.
For dinner our shabu shabu meal was gorgeous. While I appreciate the opportunities to try new things I also love eating high quality well cooked meat and mushrooms and being unapologetic about it haha.
Apparently this is the only picture I took of dinner, sorry! I just loved the presentation of the appetizers hehe.
