Cherry blossom in Japan

This is a chain, so there are a quite few all over the place. One place we went was one in Kyoto Sanjou, 2 minutes from the KEIHAN SANJOU station. I do not believe that this is the best of all, since Kyoto has a lot of secret places that you could not possible know. We went there because we needed to eat lunch. This was the one of the big ones and easy to find. Plus we had a baby in a stroller store.

Surprisingly, we had very relaxing lunch. We were seated, and our baby was already sleeping, so we put him on the booster chair and let him sleep. The menu was in color and had pictures, so it was easy to order, even if you do not read Japanese or are not familiar with Japanese food. We ordered a draft beer called Moly, which was served in a chilled beer mug. After quite a walk, that was a big treat. My husband ordered some set menu that comes with sushi, soba, and tempura. I also ordered a set that came with soba and Kamo tempura. What I like about Japanese food in Japan is that you can everything in one order.

Hamo is a pike conger. This fish is not popular on the east side of Japan, but in the Kansai area, which includes Kyoto, Osaka, etc., it is eaten more. Therefore, I wanted to test it. Trying some peculiar foods is part of the fun for traveling. It was tasty; it tastes like eel. Its texture is gummy. My husband thought that the tempura was nothing like the tempura he has had in US.

Surely you’ve heard about The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. That movie is fiction--there was no Tom Cruise character or Ken Watanabe character in real life. So why is that movie such a big hit? People like swords, Samurai, and so on, but beyond that, why? There are a lot of actual people who created those characters, not necessarily legends but the collection of the characteristics of the image of Samurai. There was a group of people who believed in something very strong, but it was not successful because they were going against the flow of history. Then why do people in Japan still love these people? They were a violent, bloody group of assassins, and their name was "SHINSENGUMI". At the end of the Samurai period, people were gathered in Kyoto for protecting the emperor.

I wanted to visit this house for long time--the house they stayed in until they got to be a bigger organization. They were afraid, feared, but loved in the end. It still has a mark from assignation for one of their kind to keep their rule. You pay 1,000 yen, which is about 10 dollars or less, and you are guided to see this small house, which you cannot imagine six rough guys sleeping in, and at the end they serve you green tea and sweets. Unfortunately, they have no English guide available.

We took taxi from Keihan shijou station--I cannot remember exactly how much, but it was between 20 to 30 dollars--and we walked back on shijou douri. There is a bus available from Shijou station.

This is department store, a little bit less high-end but quite practical. It is designed for young-generation for clothing and so forth. There is a nice cafe where you can have coffee, tea, sweets, and some light meals. There is also grocery section in a basement where all the housewives come to shop for their family-dinner shopping. For those who have 2-years-old who want to play, there is amusement area at top floor, which is 6F. We paid $3 for him to be in playground. It gets very crowded on the weekend, but weekdays there are no kids or only a few. The Japanese department store is very compact and convenient, so after we did shopping for our friends, we went up sixth floor for my son to play. We were sitting and resting, watching him having a ball. Then after that we went to one of the cafés to enjoy a nice snack. My husband goes nuts with their ice-cream thing, called Pafe.