27 March 2008

I woke-up very early today around 6am. I think my roommate Trudy and I are both off a bit on our internal clocks, but we got up and decided to explore more of downtown Kyoto. I assumed that most eating venues would be open around 7:30am since many people are going to work at that time, but my assumption was wrong. We finally found a small noodle shop called Nakau to eat breakfast at. It was one of the restaurants where you buy your meal ticket out of a machine and then sit down to eat. It was much easier than trying to order due to our strong language barrier. I ordered my favorite udon dish, tanuki, and it was only 200 yen. Thinking about the meal cost a bit more however, I realized that even if I spend 500 yen on every meal, that would add up to 1500 yen per day and 10500 yen per week. My goal is now to eat as cheaply as possible without being ridiculous. Food is just very expensive here, especially fruits. I saw a melon that cost about $50! It indeed was very perfect in appearance, but it was nonetheless ridiculous expensive. Later that afternoon, we met Don at 1pm to visit the locations of our studio classroom, Japanese language classroom, and explore the downtown a bit more. Our studio will be held in the Kyoto Community Center, and our Japanese language class will be in a small little townhouse that was built over a hundred years ago. It felt like we were walking forever, and everyone seemed to be pooped out, but Don was like the Enigizer Bunny. After it seemed like miles and miles of walking, we ended by walking through the shopping arcade which had the feel of a busy marketplace. Most of the foods and goods being sold were handmade, and I really had to watch out for dead fish since they were plentiful as well. Before retiring to our accommodations, we had traditional ramen at a tiny ramen house. There were ten of us, and we couldn’t be all be seated together since only eight of us could be seated inside. There were only four types of ramen on the menu, so I ordered the “normal” one which was plain ramen with a little bit of pork and green onions. The dashi was much thicker than any ramen I had ever eaten, and the noodles were very skinny. It was really tasty, and I ate the whole thing. I even tried putting some red peppers and fried crispy rice on my ramen, and it was good as well. Since that bowl of ramen was much larger, it cost 600 yen, but it still didn’t seem unreasonable for such a large and authentic bowl of noodles. Afterwards, I noticed that my hair and clothes still smelled like the dashi, and it made me laugh. I ended my night with an evening of sitting in the free massage chairs at the hotel to relax after a long day of walking.