*****Kyoto*****

We have fallen in love with Kyoto! What a cool city. This week has been a highlight of our trip. This city is absolutely beautiful, pristine, historical, welcoming, authentic, spiritual, serene, exciting, cosmopolitan, sedate and happening, all at the same time. It's surrounded on 3 sides by mountains and has streams, canals, and rivers running though it. You don't walk very far without having to cross a bridge over some sort of water. Just outside our house on our teeny tiny lane we have a small canal with constant rushing water. It's beautiful to hear at night. The city is full of tiny lanes each with different character, all of them interesting to explore. Kyoto is completely charming and we have loved our stay here.

This afternoon we visited Kiyomizu Temple, a buddhist temple built mostly in 1633. Not one single nail was used in it's entire construction, absolutely unbelievable when you see the size of this place, it's enormous. Liam and I wandered the grounds for a long time marvelling at all the different buildings and shrines. Elle and Justin bowed out and waiting for me below, unfortunately this meant that they missed the most interesting temple we've yet visited. Fortunately, I took many pictures to show them what they missed;)

We then headed to Gion to wander the alleyways and canals a bit before dinner. We found quaint street after street, each lovelier than the next.

Justin has wanted to have Kobe beef in Japan and when I researched where to go, everything I found online pointed to Grill Miyata in Gion. In fact, the place and the proprietor have an incredible web following. The restaurant is a bit of a hole and probably a bit hard to find (we got lucky and stumbled upon it quite easily). If you hadn't read about it first you would likely not visit. And if you don't eat meat, there isn't much on offer. The menu pretty much read - big steak, bigger steak, huge steak, chicken, salmon, rice/pickles. Hmmm, I guess I was having rice with pickles.

The owner wasn't present and the staff didn't really speak English. I had resigned myself to not eating much when the owner appeared. And what a character he was! He sloshed his way to our table and fell into a chair at our table (the only table in the whole place-- otherwise, just bar service). I still don't know if he was drunk, or just old. He wanted to know where we were from and what we had ordered. When he heard I was vegetarian he started giving orders to the staff and promptly a salad, and a few other small dishes appeared. After some more small talk he left to make me his famous garlic rice. It was delicious. He brought out an article about his steak and a map to show Justin where the cows were bred, and then he brought out the raw meat to show. Mr. Hiroshi obviously takes pride in his business. He and his wife have owned it for over 43 years. He's 83 now. He says he can't afford to retire and since they never had children they have no one to take care of them. It was sad, and he said "it's a problem". He's a darling old man and likes to tell his stories. He never left our table during our entire meal, he sat and talked and watched us eat. Even directed us how to eat.

He spoke about WWII and said that in fact, the US did bomb Kyoto. On April 27, 1945, he remembers. And he insists that the US was going to drop a third atomic bomb, on Kyoto, on August 18th. But, they got lucky as the war ended on August 16th. He loves his city, but he likes America too, and Americans. He took care of us throughout the meal and then insisted on walking us out and up to street level and out to the main street to clearly point the way to our next destination, Pontocho. It wasn't necessary, but we got the feeling that he didn't really want to say goodbye to us just yet. We will remember Mr. Hiroshi.

Pontocho is a very narrow lane that comes to life at night with popular restaurants, bars and geisha tea houses. It's one of the few places where you may catch a glimpse of a geisha on her way to an appointment. We didn't, but it still made for a lively after dinner walk. The lanterns were all lit up and the residents of Kyoto were clearly out to enjoy themselves.

It's our last day in Kyoto and we are sad to go, this is an incredible city. It's everything you would want Japan to be and more. Tomorrow, bullet train back to Tokyo. Almost home now.