Day 5: (Almost) Free day

The plan was to go to Kibune and Kifune today, but as everyone did not seem to keen to travel out so far, we decided to have a free day. Ko-ko headed out on his own early in the morning to Fushimi Inari Taisha. It was too late for us to finish climbing all the way to the shrine as it was another 1/2 to and 1/2 hour back when we went on Friday. So you left the house at around 6.45am when the rest of us were still sleeping. It was an easy hike for you, although you said it was nothing interesting. You were back at the house by 10am. But you were too sleepy so you decided to take a nap while we went out.

The 5 of us headed to the Okazaki Shrine, which is a rabbit shrine, just up the road from our house. Took a slow (and cold) walk in the windy weather. 

Path into the shrine

It's so cute, as there are many cute rabbit statues in the compound. 

The water pavilion

Rabbits all lined up

Mei-mei says that they are kissing

The shrine

Then we wandered around the area near the Heian Shrine and came across this bag shop.. Ooo.. my favourite! They had an amazing selection of handbags in different shapes and materials. It sure was difficult to pick one. 

So many designs

Outside of the shop

We walked along the street in search for a sushi restaurant. Saw this little quaint bookshop/book exchange place:

We found the restaurant and called Ko-ko to join us for lunch. While waiting for him, we hopped into this tea house to have some sweets and tea. It was an interesting (and expensive) experience. The lady could speak quite good English with us. 

So many seats

The first thing we were served is this hot soy bean drink, which we were told to quickly drink while it's hot. It also came with our dessert. 

Then the lady made our tea. 

Quickly stirring the matcha

Tea is served

We were also given matcha chocolate for free

She was nice to give Mei-mei some of the desserts too, although she did not order anything. 

Then Ko-ko arrived and we headed to the restaurant "Toyo Sushi" where we were seated at the bar and ordered our food:

Chef making the sushi

Sashimi platter

Sushi Platter

Unagi bento

Outside of the restaurant

After lunch, decided to go to the Chionin Temple so we hopped onto the bus. There were stalls selling things along the path from the gate heading to the main temple. So we stopped by for daddy to try out the grilled beef.

We wandered the grounds a little, nothing of much interest to us (on hindsight, it looks like we did not explore the whole place). But then we were told to clear the walkway, turned out that there was a wedding procession about to begin. So we stood around a little to watch the (rather somber) wedding procession. 

When we were ready to go, we crossed the road and headed to Gion to look at it in the daytime. 

Beautiful river

Nearly empty path

After that, we headed to Lopia again. The plan was to buy more materials to cook dinner. We walked out of the cold into the Kyoto Station underground where we bought some ingredients from Isetan and then Mei-mei and I separated from the group. I wanted to bring you to Animate where Google Maps brought us to a non-existent entrance. So we went to 2nd Street to quickly look around and then the building which house Uniqlo and GU. 

Then we headed home, thinking the rest must be cooking dinner. We discovered that they were not yet home! They arrived shortly and we started preparing dinner. It was nice of the AirBnB host to provide rice to cook in the rice cooker in the house. 

All the things bought today

Miso soup

1 chef, 3 supervisors

Scallops (more charred than yesterday)

Daddy cooking the beef, while Evan fries up the garlic 

(weirdest garlic ever, it came in a jar and tastes like it's pickled)

Beef

Adding raw egg to the super hot rice

Another cut of beef

Lastly, the stir fried cabbage

Itadaki-masu.