Tuesday, April 17th - Kyoto/Arashiyama

Today, we checked out the Zen cafe (attached to our hostel) for breakfast wince they advertised a buffet with scrambled eggs, sausages, and more. After eating there, we decided to stick with convenience store breakfasts in the future. The scrambled eggs looked legit, but they tasted as though they had been boiled instead of pan-cooked. The "sausages" were actually mini hot dogs.

Afterwards we took the train to Arashiyama, about a 15 minute train ride from Kyoto Station. This was a spot highly recommended by my friend Cat. And we were not disappointed. We started out strolling through the gardens of the Tenryu-Ji temple. This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We spent a good amount of time in these gardens. It was peaceful and quiet there, unlike the atmosphere that we have found at other tourist sites. Of course there were lots of blossoms and there was also a beautiful pond filled with large and colorful fish.

Mark was really excited to ring the bell. There was no line!

Pond at Tenryu-Ji

Big Fish

Lots of blossoms on the ground

Towards the end of the gardens, the scenery started to change as we approached the famous bamboo forest. Not only is this forest famous, but it is also featured on the front of Mercer's 2011 National Benchmarking survey which we provide to most of our clients. I made that connection about a week before we left on our trip.

I really like Arashiyama. It had more of a small-town feel to it than Kyoto or Nara did. After the bamboo forest, we went somewhere less-known where few tourists dare to go: the monkey park. Now why would tourists overlook such an appealing-sounding attraction? Well, it requires a 20 minute hike up a mountain. Mark and I managed the hike without a problem, and we were even greeted by two monkeys before we reached the top. You couldn't touch the monkeys, except in the special feeding building where you buy food and feed it to them through caged windows so that you are protected. We had a lot of fun with this, especially me. I made friends with one monkey that would imitate me and would open his mouth really wide whenever I did. He was really cute. He also got most of the food (peanuts and apples) from me. The baby monkeys were also adorable. I said "Aww" so many times while we were there. By far, this was my favorite part of the trip so far.

Aww!

Aww!

Aww! Baby monkey

My favorite monkey. That's him imitating me. Doesn't he have character?

Making faces at my favorite monkey

Family picture overlooking Arashiyama

After the monkey park we went back to more of the town center for lunch. We had fish on skewers: octopus, crab, cheese on a white fish, and soybean-coated fish. They were pretty good. We also decided to try out some bizarre soft-serve flavors for dessert. I had cherry blossom (which actually tasted pretty good) and Mark had black sesame seed. I thought it was pretty disgusting since I don't really like black sesame seeds but Mark thought is was pretty tasty. I just think he liked the idea of eating weird black ice cream.

We contemplated visiting other parts of town after lunch but decided against it since we had been wearing ourselves out the past few days. Instead, we headed back to the hostel and relaxed in the late afternoon.

For dinner, we had tempura (battered and fried fish and veggies) at a really good restaurant in Kyoto Station. Mark ordered the Ladies' Special which consisted of a miso-flavored flan, shrimp, lotus root, tofu, and sweet potato tempura, among other things. My tempura contained bamboo, some greens, shrimp, other fish, and a big long piece of eel which was pretty fabulous. We are slowly checking off all the food from our list of foods to try in Japan. We were pretty satisfied with the tempura.

Again, we were pretty pooped and went back to the hostel and chilled/read before going to sleep.