Sunday 31/01/10 - Kyoto central

Today we were thinking of going to some temples in Kyoto but when we woke up it was raining...

So we chaged our plan to go to some shops in central Kyoto and walk around and find fun things.

The first weird thing that happened today was my big breakfast mistake. I went to a takeaway shop to order some bentos for breakfast and instead of two, I ended up with three. One too many. The silver lining was that one was really awful due to it's strange fried squid content and so we didn't eat that one. The other two were nice.

We left the house and took the subway up the street aiming for "Kyoto Art Centre" which has some galleries. Unfortunately there were no exhibitions on, but as we were walking out we saw people pounding mochi across the road. We went over to have a look and were accosted by some old gentlemen who wanted us to sign a little visitors book. They gave us some weird tickets and a little kids puzzle. It turns out that since it's the end of January there's a mochi festival in that local area and lots of families with kids had come out to this old kindergarten to eat mochi and have a nice time. There were ladies in a big kitchen cooking up the rice, and guys outside pounding it into dough. Each of the kids was given a turn pounding.

A nice man who could speak a little bit of english came and showed us around, then he led us inside to where some ladies gave us three sorts of mochi to eat which is what everyone was getting. The first was a box with mochi that had anko and some that had a brown powder that we can't identify. Probably ground husk of some grain or something. The second was mochi in anko soup like we had previously. The nice man insisted that we try them all and sit in the hall where everybody else was. He also gave us some tea.

The official way for kids to eat mochi at the mochi festival was by letting their parents eat it while they run around and accidentally tip over cups of mochi soup. We tried very hard to be good and finish all ours, but they gave us SO MUCH. It was very difficult. Mochi is gummy and hard to chew and swallow so it took us a long time, all while we felt out of place.  It was delicious though!

After the mochi festival we decided to walk to the Kaleidoscope museum and had a coffee to calm down. We also went to a big cubic mall that we'd been to before. This time it was packed with people watching a dancing competition on a big stage, so we watched too. Most of the dancers were high school students and they were really good. It was rad. Some kids did robot dancing and were really really really good. Super good. Wow.

We went to a few shops and then continued on our kaleidoscopic quest. The kaleidoscopes were fun and mostly different from last year. A lady explained to me in great detail about a kaleidoscope but I only understood a bit.

After kaleidoscopes we wandered through the streets looking at interesting shops. We remembered that there was a button shop around somewhere and searched for it. Christina found a bead shop instead, so I had to stand outside for hours (minutes -ed.) taking photos etc. We also found the button shop but Christina didn't buy anything.

We wandered around for ages looking at all kinds of alternative and expensive fashions, bicycles etc. Eventually we ended up at the Teramachi arcades and we went in there to look around for more interesting stuff. The most interesting thing we found was another coffee which we drank while people watching from the second floor of a Starbucks. People are cool. I looked in another bag shop and Christina looked at shoes. We ended up at a department store looking at men's clothes and I tried on a jacket but didn't buy it. It was too small. I also had a conversation with a man about jeans and also didn't buy any.

On the way home, Christina looked at some frilly clothes shops and we also went to ANOTHER camera shop called "naniwa camera". I thought it would be the same as regular camera shops, but this one had a huge collection of second hand film cameras which was fun to look at (Charles took HOURS -ed.).

On the way home we stopped at our regular restaurant to get dinner. I ordered a beef/rice/egg bowl and, in her first serious misstep, Christina accidentally ordered beansprouts and liver which we didn't like at all. The beansprouts were nice though.  She is still in shock that she ate liver.  Gross.