But that's okay, because we didn't come for the games - we came for the food! In addition to the games, Namjatown has 3 special food "stadiums": Gyoza Stadium, Ice Cream City and Dessert Land - all dedicated to providing you with various incarnations of their namesakes. So of course we had to sample something from each place! We had delicious gyoza, gelato (cookies 'n cream for me, green tea for Cinnamon) and some cute little desserts that I forget the name of.
This was Cinnamon's banana thing. It was like a banana encased in mousse and wrapped in a crepe. It looks tiny, but was very filling.
And this was mine - chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. Very rich and very filling for something that was probably the size of a large muffin.
After playing around in the house of mirrors for a little while, we decided to call it a day and headed home.
The next day, neither of us were feeling 100%, so we didn't do much but go to Shinagawa to get our Rail Passes and made a mad dash to Shinjuku to try for a demachi. (It was a semi-success). On Tuesday, we intended to get up bright and early to head to Kyoto, but we both ended up sleeping in after our day of blah-ness. After packing our bags and saying "sayonara" to our happy little Tokyo room, we headed to Shinagawa and grabbed a shinkansen to Kyoto~
Three hours later, we were there. Our first night was uneventful. We checked into our (very, very nice) hostel, waited an hour for the sudden rain shower to end, then got a bite to eat before returning. Here are a couple random shots from our room.
This is Cinnamon and her Crunky. It's chocolate with... malt puffs or something. She said it could've been better. Over her shoulder, you can see the lovely flat panel TV we had in our room. It wasn't very big, but it looked brand new. The hostel had just been remodeled in April, so I suspect it was.
I uploaded this horrible shot of me (you can thank Cinnamon for that) so you could see the other side of our room. We had bunk beds and even a little couch! Not bad for something like $30 a night.
After some rest and a strange buffet breakfast, we made our way out to explore the city. Kyoto is a city that could benefit from some more trains. The main means of getting around is by bus and the train stations are generally not very close to any of the main tourist attractions. So we just sort of wandered.
I honestly thought this place was a church when I passed the entrance, but it turned out to be a Chinese restaurant. Very strange.
This is what's across the river from the restaurant - Cinnamon! And that, my friends, is the lovely Kamo River. I'm sure you're impressed by the sheer size of it, yes?
This picture was taken from one of the bridges crossing the river, looking north. As you can see, there are mountains there! Kind of hazy mountains, but still pretty.
We eventually wandered our way to the south end of Gion and walked down a lot of little shopping streets full of all kinds of things - from traditional items like fans and yukata to trendy clothing, shoes, and about 3 First Kitchen restaurants. When we finally emerged from the maze of covered streets, we came upon this:
It is a giant "hoko" float that's used in the Gion Matsuri. (Matsuri being a festival, and the Gion Matsuri being one of the 3 biggest festivals in Japan). We didn't quite know what was going on at the time, though we were vaguely aware that we had landed in Kyoto during the Matsuri period. There were a ton of people crowding the sidewalk, trying to get pictures of this thing. And there are actually close to 30 of them, if memory serves me right.
A little later on, some of the hoko had guys playing music on them (flutes and some sort of chimes, I think). I'm pretty sure they only ever played one song, so it got pretty repetitive.
For... no reason I could discern, there was some little procession of the Shinsengumi. It was really hard to get this picture, since the guys were always walking and the people on the sidewalk were just inching along, not allowing me to get ahead of them.
We ended up walking down a street where all these little food vendors were setting up, so we got some shaved ice! Cinnamon got strawberry and I got ramune and they were delicious - and very refreshing, since it was so hot.
After finishing those off, we decided to head back to the hostel to rest for a bit, since we wanted to go out later and check out the real matsuri activities, since they seemed to just be getting set up. I'll post more about that next time, since there are quite a few pictures involved. Stay tuned!
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