Sweet Sixteen

Yes - Takako turned sweet sixteen today. To celebrate we went to our favourite Korean restaurant in Osaka and stuffed ourselves with yummy Korean food. Actually food seems to have been the theme over the past few days - the shojin ryori (vegetarian temple food) at the temple we stayed at in Koya-san, the yudofu (simmered tofu) we ate for lunch yesterday, the seasonal set lunch we had today in Kyoto (which included the very expensive matsutake mushrooms - one mushroom can fetch 10,000 yen!)... Takako and I seem to be obsessed with food and there are some great places to eat in Japan.

We had a very lazy morning today - it being Takako's birthday - but eventually we got ourselves organised and caught the train to Kyoto. The main destination was Arashiyama in the west of the city, which is famous for it's autumn leaves, but on the way we decided to take a walk through Nishiki market, which is full of shops selling pickles, fish, tofu etc. Japanese pickles are fantastic and I really wish I could take some back to Australia.

Arashiyama was teeming with people even though it's a little early for the autumn leaves. We walked along the river for a while before visiting Tenryu-ji temple, which is famous for it's gardens. They are definitely beautiful, but it's difficult to appreciate them with the crowds of tourists. I remember thinking when I used to live here that if I visited places early in the morning there wouldn't be so many tourists, but Kyoto is always full of tourists and the famous places are always swarming with them. Still Takako and I had a wonderful afternoon - walking around Kyoto is a great way to spend a birthday.

On a more serious note yesterday there was big earthquake - actually a series of 3 quakes - in Niigata Prefecture in north-western Japan. The death toll isn't so high, but a lot of people have been made homeless and there was a lot of damage. The quake also derailed a shinkansen (bullet) train on its way from Tokyo to Niigata - the first time there's ever been an accident on the shinkansen. Brings back memories of the Kobe earthquake on January 17th 1995 - nearly 10 years ago.