For Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Kyoto
I upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS version 5 in the morning using my new laptop. Then I rode a rented bicycle with Chris (from Australia), Mike (from the U.S.), and Marion (from France) to an eclectic Japanese store called Don Quixote. It sells virtually anything you can think of, from clothing to food to kitchenware to seat cushions to memory cards to shoes. It’s all packed tightly together along narrow aisles that twist and turn haphazardly. I looked for some pajama shorts and some t-shirts, but couldn’t find anything I liked. Then we rode our bikes to a cheap ramen shop near our hostel that had the best ramen I’d had so far in Japan. Then we rode our bikes to Sanjusangendo, a Buddhist temple near our hostel. The sheer number of statues (a thousand) is stunning. Then we rode to another famous Buddhist temple, Kiyomizudera. It has a magnificent view of the city, and I was able to take some pictures of the cityscape at dusk when the lights started coming on. When we left the temple, it was dark, so we returned to the hostel and hung out for a while in the bar. I planned the following week that I would spend in Hong Kong on my computer. Then we took a taxi to a shabu-shabu restaurant near the Gion district — a place known for its geishas. When eating shabu-shabu, you sit at a table with a pot of boiling water in the middle, in which you put vegetables, tofu, some other things I can’t remember, and thin slices of various kinds of meat into the water to cook. The meat only takes five to fifteen seconds to cook per slice. If you select the right combination of meat and sauce, it can be heaven. You get as much meat as you can eat in an hour and a half. After the meal, we walked forty-five minutes along the river back to our hostel and arrived at about 2 AM.