Today was designated to be a quiet day. It is now 10:45pm, and I'm just sitting down to write the blog entry. Things never go to plan on our holidays.

After the massive day of walking and sight-seeing yesterday, nobody had sufficient ability or motivation to rise at our normal time, which meant that we actually got a small rest on our holiday. A concept which is a little alien to us, and to be honest, feels a little like wasted time.

By about 10:30am we were dressed and out the door. It had been raining considerably hard all night, and was tipped to do so throughout the day, so today was the ideal day to pencil in the Kyoto shopping day that the girls had been looking forward to.

Breakfast, we're finding, is an unusual concept in Japan. You have your usual options, like McDonalds and other fast food venues more than willing to take your money. Then there is the classier cafes and coffee houses, which we've found are a little hit and miss with their quality and value. Not being gambling folk, we decided to stick with what we know, and for morning coffees we ventured to the Starbucks which overlooks the Kyoto river, a few minutes from our apartment, and for food, we went to the fast, cheap and bankably excellent Yoyoiken vending machine restaurant.

Being only 11am (and open 24 hours) we had no problem getting a table at Yoyoiken, and we had ordered, been served and were out of there in under half an hour, all for less than $30 for breakfast for the 5 of us.

With breakfast done it was onto the very familiar Teramachi and Shin-Kyogoku shopping arcades to check out all of the shops, and realised very little has changed since we were here last. All shops seem to be in the same places, and the shop assistants all shout at you when you enter in the strangely hostile, yet welcoming manner than they did before.

Veronica and the girls have been looking forward to shopping in all of the 100 yen stores that line these streets, which is my definition of hell, so for a few hours around lunchtime I found myself standing out in front of stores, holding an increasingly large number of bags, while the girls jumped from one 100 yen store to the next.

We browsed through the shops, stopping to check out anything of interest along the way. I'm still trying to find a shoe shop that will take my money for a decently priced set of Nike Air running shoes, but so far I've come up a little empty. Maybe in Osaka I'll find a pair before we have to board the flight to head home.

On that topic, it is just starting to dawn on us that tomorrow is the final full day in our second last city. One more city to go, and then we board the plane to return back to reality, which is a little depressing. I think it is hitting Charlotte the hardest at the moment. Angela has loved her time in Japan, and Isabelle would be happy wherever we took her, but Charlotte absolutely loves it here, and I think she feels the same strange connection with the country that I do.
I don't know why Japan gets under my skin like it does, but I just love it here, and I'll also be more than a little sad when Friday comes around and it is time to get back on the plane to return home.

But, I guess all holidays have to end, and I don't think anyone can accuse us of wasting any time.

With shopping done, and still being full from the huge brunch we had a few hours earlier, we decided that crepes were sufficiently naughty to tide us over till dinner time. We've been to the same crepe place once on every trip to Japan, and it was only after purchasing today that we realised that they were the same crepes as we had yesterday at the street leading to Kiyomizu temple. They weren't quite as big today, but they were every bit as sickly sweet, and damn good.

We returned back to the apartment at around 3pm, with all intentions of having a rest, and going out for dinner later. That didn't last long when we realised that we wanted to climb Fushimi Inari shrine, as well as look at Kinkakuji, and were planning on doing both tomorrow. The problem is that they're on exact opposite sides of Kyoto, with Fushimi Inari in the south east, and Kinkakuji in the north west.

So after all of about 20 minutes rest, we gathered our coats and were heading back out the door, bound for Fushimi Inari.
Once or twice every holiday, during the last 2 trips to Japan, Charlotte falls and hurts herself.
On the first trip when she was 4, she dived off a chair in the foyer of a hotel, head first into a fire extinguisher.
On the second trip, when she was 7, she fell into an open drain on a street in Kyoto, twisting her ankle. Also on the same trip, a day or 2 later she fell down the stairs at Fushimi Inari shrine (the same shrine we planned to visit today), twisting the other ankle and dropping her ice cream cone.

Today she evidently decided it would be prudent to fall again, just to uphold tradition. This time involved her slipping on the top stair of the loft in our apartment, and tumbling head first down the stairs, and ending up upside-down, wrapped around the tree at the bottom of the staircase.

She gave herself a hell of a fright, but by some miracle came out of the spectacular tumble uninjured, except for a decent bruise to the hip that came in contact with the tree during her descent.

With that little distraction out of the way, we headed back out towards the subway line. From the Sanjo subway station, which is around 15 minutes from our apartment, we travelled south for around 15 minutes and got off the subway at Fushimi Inari.

Being after 4pm there were a fair few people around, but they were mostly heading away from the shrine, which was good news for us since it meant less crowds.
Veronica knew what kind of climb was ahead of us, and since she had no interest in seeing the top, and she knew Isabelle wouldn't make it all the way up there under her own power, we got some photos around the tori gates at the bottom, agreed on a time and a meeting place, and set off.

The Fushimi Inari complex consists of a few huge tori at the entrace, followed by some fantastically decorated and maintained gates, temples and other buildings, then a pathway lined with thousands of Tori gates, which have been donated by businesses across Japan. While the buildings down at ground level are attractive, it is the pathway which winds up the mountain through the tunnel of tori gates is the main attraction to this particular shrine.

Since we were climbing fairly late in the afternoon, we had most of the pathway to ourselves. I can't imagine it would be a pleasant place to visit if it was particularly crowded, but with nobody in front or behind you, you're free to climb at your own pace, stop and take photos wherever you need to, and it is a very pleasant mountain walk.

One of the main reasons for coming back to this shrine was the mountain ice cream. Charlotte and I climbed the mountain in 2011, and near the summit is a shop which stocks foods, drinks and soft serve ice cream, and according to Charlotte, although it might be just selective euphoric memory from a previous holiday, she says it was the best ice cream she's ever had. So naturally this was on the to-do list once we got to the top.

So with the light fading we climbed, stopping along the way to get a variety of uninterrupted photos, and eventually we reached the summit, just as they were closing the door to the shop. It was 5:04pm, and they wouldn't sell Angela and Charlotte an ice cream, no matter how much I asked in my best Japanese, or waved the money in their faces. So the girls missed ticking something off their bucket list by all of 4 minutes. Like the woman who closed space mountain at Disneyland a week ago only seconds before we got to it, I secretly hope that the staff of the store at the top of Fushimi Inari develop a nasty infection in some part of their body that they really value, and that it drops off, rather painfully, as a result.

With nothing left to do but walk through the cemetary at the top of the hill in the fading light, which was kind of cool, we began our descent. As was the case with Mount Misen on Miyajima a few weeks ago, down is infinitely easier than up. Bless you gravity.
One thing that becomes really apparent with the Japanese winter, which we're not used to in Australia, is that it gets dark fast. It was still relatively light when we were at the top of the mountain, and by the time we got to the bottom, 15 or 20 minutes later, it was completely dark.

With the fading light we were also able to get some really nice arty photographs on the way down, and the lack of any other people on the trail made shooting easy. There was one guy though, who Charlotte noticed. He was decked out with the expensive looking SLR, with the massive zoom lens, camera bag with tripod draped over his shoulder, etc. He looked serious.
The problem was that he was following us down, and taking the exact same shots that I was. He'd walk behind me, watch me compose and take a shot, then he'd line up and take the exact same shot before hurrying to catch up with us.

I thought it must be just coincidence, so I slowed down, hoping he'd pass, but he didn't. Then I decided to carefully line up a shot of absolutely nothing special. Just trees. And sure enough, he did the same.
This would be well and good if I was a good photographer with an eye for perspective, light levels and anything else that go into taking a decent photo, but I don't. I don't know the first thing about photography. I just know what looks good in a photo, so I line it up and shoot it. This guy was either insane, or under the false impression that I had some clue of what I was doing.

After losing the crazy person somewhere in the lower temple grounds, and meeting back up with Veronica, we headed back to the train station, destined for the Kyoto Teramachi shopping district for dinner. Angela has had problems with vending machines on this trip. She wanted a drink after the long climb, and the drink she wants is invariably on the top row of drink options. She's usually too short to reach the top row without stretching, and several times now she's stretched, and pressed a random button with her body in the process.
This time she bought hot corn soup. Actually quite delicious corn soup.

After a few subway stops we arrived in the Kyoto shopping district, seeking something for dinner other than corn soup. It was getting late, and on a busy Sunday night we knew we'd be pushing our luck.

It was crowded. Our first plan was to go back to Bikkuri Donkey, which we visited in Dotombori in Osaka at the start of the trip, but the line almost out the door changed our mind. We wandered down Kawaramachi-dori, one of Kyoto's most lively and busy streets, in search of something delicious for dinner.

The first option we came across, which I had trouble passing, was Godiva chocolatier. This place sells massively expensive designer chocolates, and for a very reasonable price will make you a very decadent hot chocolate or chocolate milkshake. We bought 2 milk chocolate shakes, and 2 caramel chocolate shakes, and while I loved the milk chocolate one, and Angela and Isabelle loved the caramel ones, Charlotte and Veronica weren't impressed. They were incredibly rich though. I ended up drinking a whole chocolate one, and some of each of the other 3. I was initially disappointed with the small servings when they first came out. After I had to drink them later I wasn't so disappointed that they were only small cups.

With nothing else taking our interest along the entire length of Karawamachi-dori, we'd passed the original Katsukura restaurant at the end of the Teramachi shopping arcade earlier in the day. I knew I wanted this once while in Japan, and we'd planned it for tomorrow night, but as a last ditch effort we decided to go in and try our luck. Getting a table for 5 people in a restaurant anywhere on a busy Sunday night was going to be hard. At the original Katsukura restaurant, it should have been just about impossible.

But it wasn't. We walked into the restaurant, and through the quaint hallway which consists of a stone path and a fake wooden bridge, and we were asked to take a seat in the waiting area. In front of us were around 10 people seated at bar seating, and what we didn't realise was that there was an entire basement level of seating downstairs. After no more than 30 seconds we were ushered downstairs and to a table.

One thing I love about Japanese restaurants is the efficiency. There always seems to be ample staff. The staff always seem to be attentive, and the orders are taken promptly, and the food comes out very quickly. Perhaps we've just been lucky with the restaurants we've visited, but this has been the general rule whenever we've dined out, and Katsukura was no exception.

Around 10 minutes after taking our order, the sauces, rice and soup started arriving. Katsukura, and other Tonkatsu restaurants have a delicious an entertaining little activity which involves making your own sauce. They bring out bowls of toasted sesame seeds in a mortar and pestle, and you grind the seeds up at the table while you're waiting for your meal. Once ground, you mix the nutty sesame seeds with your choice of sauces, varying in flavour and spice levels, to your liking.

Isabelle's meal came out first, all contained in a Wiggles style big red car. She loved bashing the sesame seeds to a fine powder, and she loved that her meal arrived in a car.
The rest of our meals followed very soon afterwards. Charlotte had the chicken cutlet, Angela had a medium sized pork cutlet, and Veronica and I had the large sized "premium" tenderloin pork cutlet.

Last time we visited Katsukura, at Kyoto station during the last Japan trip, it was good, but I wasn't overly impressed. This time it was quite simply magnificent. It was the tenderest and tastiest tonkatsu I have ever had, and after 3 trips to Japan I've sampled many. Juicy, impossibly tender meat, and an audible crunchy crumb which just went so well with the freshly smashed sesame tonkatsu sauce. I now have a new benchmark against which all future tonkatsu meals will be measured, and that isn't something that happens every day.

After collecting our belongings and chatting to some locals who were curious about where we were from, how old the girls were, etc, we made our way back upstairs to street level, and noticed that the upper level of the restaurant was a little busier than it was before. While the restaurant was busier, what we didn't immediately notice was that now, just 40 minutes later the upstairs was completely full, as was the upstairs waiting area, and the line snaked through the hallway, and out the door. The people in the line were probably looking at a 45 minute to 1 hour wait time. We were very lucky to get to the restaurant when we did.

Absolutely full, completely exhausted, and 2 hours past the girls usual Australian bedtime, naturally the smart thing to do would be desert (Baskin Robins!), followed by more 100 yen shopping. Veronica actually wanted to find some particular boxes for her craft that she didn't buy enough of during the day, so we backtracked through the 5 or so 100 yen stores that we'd visited today. Unfortunately however, the boxes she was seeking were nowhere to be found, so we headed for home.

Every day when we're walking back to the apartment, we note that it keeps getting further and further away. Tonight it seemed to take an eternity to reach the humble little fishy-smelling mall where our apartment entrance is, and I'm sure after tomorrow's trekking across Kyoto, sadly for the last time, it will feel even further away again.