Our hotel came with breakfast but didn’t have a restaurant. The way it worked was you set your breakfast time the day before. There was a choice between western and Japanese breakfasts. Kuah and I both went for the Japanese ones. Then they had it catered from a nearby restaurant and delivered it to your room every morning. We had a nice table in the room overlooking the river to enjoy our breakfasts.
I didn’t have high hopes but ended up really enjoying the breakfasts. We got miso soup with lots of tofu, rice and wooden boxes with fun bites. The first day it came with a mochi on a stick in a savory sauce, beans sprouts and cabbage, grapefruit, tamago, grilled fish with lotus root, sweet potato, carrots, fried tofu and a meatball. I enjoyed all of it but the fish which was just too fishy for me. The next 2 days the breakfasts were similar and fun to eat. It also came with your choice of coffee or tea. I picked tea and got a pot of green tea and another pot of black tea. Kuah got a pot of coffee that was surprisingly decent.
Unfortunately after breakfast Kuah had some work to deal with so I went out for a walk. The neighborhood we were in was really cute. There were lots of small alleyways and restaurants. There was a small temple and a small river with some wildlife. There weren’t many people out yet at this time so I got to enjoy the quiet nature. Well, in reality I usually listen to some sort of podcast or audio book when walking but it was nice not to be in a crowd.
After I got back Kuah was ready to head out with me, yay! On the docket for today was a tofu kaiseki restaurant. I was super excited for this meal as I thought it would be healthy and introduce a lot of new tofu ideas for me. It started out well with a small bite of yuba (Japanese tofu skin). Then it went to it’s specialty which was a hot pot with both yuba and firm tofu. This was the specialty of the restaurant. Unfortunately, Kuah and I both found it to be bland. From there the meal had a another tofu bite, some tempura, soup and a dessert. All in all it was an extremely disappointing meal. At least it was healthy.
After lunch we headed out to the Nakagyo district of Kyoto. This was a short walk from the area we were staying in but was much busier. There were lots of covered areas to walk and shop. It included several famous shopping streets and department stores. Even though we had, had a pretty big lunch we wanted to find something fun for dinner. After wandering through the shops we ended up at a yakitori shop. It was standing only and we chose a corner of the bar where we could watch them grill the food. We got a few beers and ordered some food. We had grilled rice balls, chicken and what ended up being my favorite, fresh cucumber with miso dip.
It was a fun meal but by the end I was hot and tired. Thankfully there was a bench outside so I could sit and cool off while Kuah paid the bill. From here started heading towards home while enjoying the fun streets. In total we walked 9.6 miles. My foot was happy to be iced and then get a warm bath for recovery. I was also glad I had bought my boot for sleeping. I think it really helped my foot recover from the stresses of the day.
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