Monday, April 13, 2009 ;
2:58 PM
This pic below shows a traditional dessert. It is like a fruit jelly. However, before eating, you have to cut up the whole chunk into little cubes, and then dip the cubes with syrup (provided in box), and then further coat the sticky cubes with something like peanut powder.
Very interesting textures and yummy indeed. ds1 especially liked it.
When it is time for dinner, the staff will come into our room, arrange our table, clean things up and start bringing the trays in.
I always marvel at the amount of different size dishes with so many different patterns and designs that a single meal requires. I have been tempted to buy Japanese cutlery and dish sets, but they are not cheap and come in so many different forms, it would be an expensive undertaking to collect enough to serve a family of four!
The kids' meal. Omelette with ham fried rice inside, a lot of different tempura, donkatsu (Sp?), and a grilled then braised burger patty?
The adult spread. Ours look so much more enticing right? Funny the kids always think ours is disgusting. There was indeed some convoluted whitish lump in the boiling soup with fluted aluminium that looked like the brains of some animal. But we checked with the staff and found that it was the eggs of some marine animal. Their English is non-existent while our Japanese could be Greek to them too, so we only understood it was "not brains" but some kind of egg/ roe.
The kids didn't want to try that. I did. One mouthful. Dh ate it all. Said it was delicious. I drank the soup. It did taste good. But I couldn't bring myself to eat more of the convoluted stuff. For me, the visual part conjures up too many other related images that are not appetizing. Men have less complicated time eating food, good for them!
I normally don't care for sashimi or other raw stuff, but I did eat them here.
The fruits served: honeydew and strawberries. And always, a big pot of steaming green tea. Lovely.
Not miso soup today but fresh bamboo shoot, seaweed, tofu and gold flakes! You know what? The kids loved this soup! I think it was flavoured well, and this pic actually shows it steaming hot. The gold flakes were a novelty and the kids kept competing to see who ate more gold. I wonder if this "heavy metal" is good for their young intestines?? But so far, nothing happened. We didn't get sick in Japan.
Me helping everyone to cook their veggies in the soup, do the teppanyaki (?) etc..
We couldn't decide if this was dessert or what initially. Cos the glutinous rice (in pink) is salty. Later we found out it is not. Usually glutinous rice (especially in pink) for us is sweet, so this took some getting used to.
Then Dh made a night trip to Gion while I made both boys sleep.
Gion is a fascinating cultural and historical site. (By the way, Kyoto has so many UNESCO heritage sites!)
Someone performing "swallowing fire" for the crowds.
They light up the cherry trees at night. Totally different look frm the daytime. Magical.
People here don't "kiss under the mistletoe". They kiss under the sakura. haha. Dh caught a number of people doing that.
Then there are a lot of food and games stalls (like pasar malam in Spore) that add festivity and atmosphere to the park.
A lot of parties under the sakura (hanami). See, they have nice table cloth and all the fancy stuff. They really enjoy themselves!
Part of the Yasuka Shrine.
With everything lit up, it is a very enchanting look.
Narrow streets and alleyways of Gion. This area is where the Kaburenjo Theatre is, where maiko and geiko (geisha) dances/ performances are. A lot of people come here to see the real maiko and geiko. We wanted to buy tickets to the performances but all the tickets were sold out for 2 weeks!
The old-world charm of Gion...
rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
____________________________________________________________
The adult spread. Ours look so much more enticing right? Funny the kids always think ours is disgusting. There was indeed some convoluted whitish lump in the boiling soup with fluted aluminium that looked like the brains of some animal. But we checked with the staff and found that it was the eggs of some marine animal. Their English is non-existent while our Japanese could be Greek to them too, so we only understood it was "not brains" but some kind of egg/ roe.
The fruits served: honeydew and strawberries. And always, a big pot of steaming green tea. Lovely.
Not miso soup today but fresh bamboo shoot, seaweed, tofu and gold flakes! You know what? The kids loved this soup! I think it was flavoured well, and this pic actually shows it steaming hot. The gold flakes were a novelty and the kids kept competing to see who ate more gold. I wonder if this "heavy metal" is good for their young intestines?? But so far, nothing happened. We didn't get sick in Japan.
Me helping everyone to cook their veggies in the soup, do the teppanyaki (?) etc..
We couldn't decide if this was dessert or what initially. Cos the glutinous rice (in pink) is salty. Later we found out it is not. Usually glutinous rice (especially in pink) for us is sweet, so this took some getting used to.
Then Dh made a night trip to Gion while I made both boys sleep.
Gion is a fascinating cultural and historical site. (By the way, Kyoto has so many UNESCO heritage sites!)
A lot of parties under the sakura (hanami). See, they have nice table cloth and all the fancy stuff. They really enjoy themselves!
With everything lit up, it is a very enchanting look.
Narrow streets and alleyways of Gion. This area is where the Kaburenjo Theatre is, where maiko and geiko (geisha) dances/ performances are. A lot of people come here to see the real maiko and geiko. We wanted to buy tickets to the performances but all the tickets were sold out for 2 weeks!
