Kyoto

Nile went to Kyoto to visit Yukiko. At the train station, there were markings on the platform indicating which car for which train stops at the designated location.

Here comes the shinkansen!

In Kyoto, Nile found someone growing mums on the street.

Kyoto is famous for many beautiful things including fall colors.

Yukiko and Hina.

Yukiko took Nile to Byoudoin which is on the 10 yen coin.







This is the view that is on the 10 yen coin.




The next day Hina went to school and Yukiko and Nile went to Nishiki Market. The "Kitchen of Kyoto."

Nishiki is famous for its pickle stores.

Here is Yukiko smiling with the dango that Nile is about to eat.


Egg store with a $5 egg in the back!

Two bonito stores

Vegitable store. Note the fresh wasabi. Mmmm. The tag is for the gobo in front, not for the wasabi. :-( The middle picture is taken at the fanciest store where they had hydroponic display.

More veggies and meat store with a fryer in front.

Two fish stores. The small packages in the middle (on the right) are fugu fins. Fugu is the blow fish that's famous for killing people when served as sushi.

These are fake sushi. They are made with cloth and stuffed, but they look pretty convincing. :-)

The boxes on the left are a sample of new year's boxes.

Onigiri store and a tea store

Food-related things in Japan

This is Sarah Rudd's favorite dressing. It's hard to see, but behind the singing guy is an even bigger bottle.

This is Japanese frozen vegetables with Mt. Fuji on the packaging.

This is takoyaki. (Fried octopus in batter.)

Costco is so much fun, even in Japan. Here is brown rice flakes. Much like bran flakes here.

Yoshinoya, which is famous for beef bowls, now with the fear of mad cow only has a limited run of beef bowls every day. The sign says that today's beef bowls are sold out.

These are mico tomatos. They are tiny, and about $6.50 per package. Needless to say, we did not try them.

Japanese restaurants often have fake food on display to show what you can order. It's like a life size menu. A couple of these items are not fake. Can you guess which ones?

This is at Mr. Donut. Nile thought these looked crazy. It's like tree rings

This is at 7-11. They have a much larger selection of food on the go than in the states.

These are individually packaged coissants. Nile was blown away by the packaging.

Here's Takashi standing in the foreground so you can see the size of the yamaimo in the box. Yamaimo is a long potato-like thing. This one is really big.

This picture is for Matt since he loves donuts.

This is a bonito flake specialty store. Boxes and boxes of bonito are shown. More bonito on the table. Bonito is a fish that is dried, smoked, and flaked. It is then added to water to make broth.

This is a giant Asian pear.

At a specialized supermarket, Nile found all kinds of weird food. We think that one of these is Hosta. We're not sure how to eat it.

You can see a gigantic fish on display here. This was at the basement of a department store. In Japan, the basement of department stores have the best grocery stores.

Real baby carrots. Not the fake ones you get here. These are about 2-3" long.

These are $11 apples with "Merry Christmas" on them.

Meiji and Morinaga are competing chocolate manufacturers. Nile thought it was funny that the packaging is so similar.

If you have seen the movie "Envy", you might remember the "brilliant" idea at the end of selling flan in a tube so it can be eaten on the go. People in Japan aparently took that seriously. There is pudding in a tube.

Three pox mystery

Nile visited Cay while he had chicken pox, after asking TK if she had had it. TK said that yeah, probbly. It turned out that Nile had no antibodies and thus might have caught it. The two spots that appeared appeared two weeks later on her shin. Usually the first ones appear on softer spots like belly, chest, etc. A third one appeard but that was it.

After 3 weeks, there is no more that appeard so Nile's Chicken Pox Fiasco is being called the three pox mystery.

Opening day!

The day stared out with everyone running around. Nile stamped goodybags first while Takashi looked out the window as delivery trucks started to arrive.

There were tomoatos to peal as well with a montain of food to cook for 12 guests. Holly didn't know what was going on but still ran around with us.
Takashi cooked pork as the main dish. The pork was shipped from Okinawa and it is the same kind that the Royal family use.
Hatae-san hand delivered a giant crab and beautiful scalops as an opening day present.

Then out of the bule, a box arrived from Yoshie's friend. It is stated that the contents is fish. and it was! Two giant Tai -- a good luck fish one of them still had the hook in it mouth.

Here is Murata-san, TK's super chef, cleaning the fish and Holly hoping to catch some sashimi. We were all running around all the time that day, as TK is demoing here. Lunch was noodles.

We kepted working and working and working.


Before the end of the day, we got over a dozen flowers delivered among other presents
At 5:45 we realized that we didn't have time to eat before our first guests arrived. Here is Takashi crying. He opend a restaurant to eat good food himself, and never did he once think that he will be skipping dinner.

Our guest that night included Tami Hiyama, a very famous cooking teacher in town and our very good family friend. Cheers!


and that is GOHANYA IMAKOKO, restaurant here and now, started.