Day 2 in Japan trip was a whirlwind – all the obstacles from the previous day seemed to melt away and, today, we seemed to flow just-in-time.
Because there’s a lot I want to write about, I’m fighting my every instinct to turn everything into a bulleted list of short, succinct, and quantified statements…
Early morning in Tokyo. Woke up a bit too early thank to jet lag but decided to roll with it. Breakfast and the Shinkansen train weren’t running yet so we walked to the Grave of the 47 Ronin/Sengaku-ji Temple nearby only to discover that it also wasn’t open either 😔. Still was a fascinating read about civic duty, particularly with the shenanigans going on with the upcoming US elections.
Breakfast highlight: ate “natto”, which is fermented soybean. Very stringy but also savory-delicious when combined with mustard and a bit of soy sauce. No slo-mo needed!
Writing this from the Shinkansen on the way to Tokyo. Yes, we actually made it! The ride is fast and strikingly quiet. Though the seats are full, all the riders are just listening to music, fiddling on their phones, sleeping, working, or – at most – talking very, very quietly. For those of you who know the CTA/Metra in Chicagoland, no need to crank up noise-canceling on your AirPods; the silence of the rider is only punctuated by PSA announcement and other ride information
My brother functioned as a noise-canceling mechanism and told me to shush several times when I tried to talk to him even though I was sitting right next to him! I’m sure the other riders were grateful for the premium brother noise-canceling service.
Daytime in Kyoto. We’re here! First up: took an amazing bike ride through Kyoto and did a partial perimeter of Kyoto’s downtown, hitting some of the most important landmarks like the Kinkakju Temple shrine, Nishi Honganji, and a few of the Geisha districts.
The bike tour was awesome and the city seems to be pretty friendly to cycling. Our tour guide was incredible; she guided us unerringly through the streets, answered innumerable questions from the group (and for those of you who know me, you know I always have questions), while being continuously chill.
Lunch was conveyor/rotary sushi and the prices alone were worth of a *chef’s kiss*. Compared to similar rotary sushi restaurants in Chicago, we were talking 2-4X cheaper AND the food quality was just so much better.
Kyoto in the evening. After the bike ride, we immediately sprang into a walking tour. As part of it, we experienced heading into two Izakaya establishments, which are very cozy bars that sometimes have food. For sense of scale, by “cozy” I mean that in the first one we went to, it looked like it could seat maybe 8 people max! It meant that the setting was also really intimate – while our tour group was there, a native visitors from Kyoto showed up and the chef called out “Ah, come in! it’s been a long time since you’ve been here.” The relationship matters.
In terms of food, move over Wagyu beef – for me, it was all about the wasabi. Not the green-colored horseradish we often get in the US; real wasabi that has a different texture and hits different. While everything was tasty, I found myself eating the wasabi alone and actively avoiding mixing it with soy sauce like I normally do with the “wasabi” in the US!
In hindsight, this could have been two posts – oh well, there’s more stuff in my head that I’ll save for later posts. Till the next post!
Disclaimer: Forgot to add this in my first article - none of this content was aided or written with GenAI tools. Just good ol’ human hands-on-keyboard!
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