Remember Fushimi Inari Shrine? There are so many gift shops and food stands – it’s an attraction within itself! I cheated a bit, my coworker came here a few days before me and sent me pictures of this special taiyaki she got. I had to get it myself!

There was a young guy working this food stand and he was all alone! He had a pretty genius way of collecting the money for it and each taiyaki he made looked great! This one is mine! It’s filled with custard, topped with cream and drizzled with chocolate. You can choose your fruit topping, I went to strawberry. It was delicious! We also bought a whole bunch of furoshiki from a gift shop here.

Nishiki Market! A must visit if you come to Kyoto. It’s a great foodie spot.

The inside of Nishiki market, it’s full of tourists and locals. There’s something about the ceiling lights that I like…I remember them from my last trip so it was comforting to see them again.

Plenty of shops were selling these mini octopus, didn’t realize there were so many sizes of this little thing. They were charging for small, medium and large. I think I went for the medium, it’s cooked in a sweet shoyu sauce and the head is stuffed with a quail egg! Morbid but delicious.

The best thing I had last time that I had to get again this time. Dashimaki Tamago. It’s not like the ones in Hawaii, the ones in Hawaii are super sweet. This one tastes more like dashi stock and it is absolutely wonderful. They are so good at making this, the seasoning and how perfectly cooked the egg is…I wish I could buy a whole block of this to enjoy. I should have.

Day trip to Kyoto! We had to make good use of our JR passes so we planned a day trip to Kyoto. We originally were planning to go to Osaka to check out Universal Studios but I was a bit theme parked out so now I have a good excuse to visit Osaka during my next visit. The JR pass allows you to purchase passes on the Hikari. Our train was at 7:15 am so we had to be up pretty early since we also had to take the train to the Shinagawa station to take the Kyoto train as well.

Bright and early in our neighborhood…heading to the station. Crows still cawing away.

View from my train seat. Lots of business men on the train headed for work, I felt a bit bad for them having to commute for hours each day to and from work.

I’m still going to do a separate food post for Kyoto but the bento pictures should go with the train rides! I went with a Chinese bento (of course I did) and it was delicious! It would have been better warmed up but I didn’t have that option. I’m kind of surprised they sell it cold.

Check this shot out! I’m so lucky. I was watching the other side in envy because they had the window closest to Mount Fuji. Then suddenly, I saw that I had my chance and took the picture. Magnificent…

Fushimi Inari Shrine – this is a shrine that’s famous for it’s path lined with hundreds of traditional gates. It’s so beautiful. We didn’t make it to the top. Can you tell by this last picture how many people there were? It was madness. There were also a lot of selfie sticks which I really didn’t appreciate, they would just stop suddenly in the middle of the path, swing out that stick and start taking pictures. The path is crowded enough! And gosh, there were so MANY Chinese tourists! Their loud yelling kind of took away from the quiet environment.

Before you enter the shrine, there is a long street filled with different gift shops and food stands. That was fun and neat to check out. Here’s a picture between the street shops, it was pretty neat.

We headed to Nishiki Market after we finished at the Shrine. I’m sharing more of that tomorrow since it’s mainly food…lol. I didn’t take as much pictures as I wanted. I believe this is the Kyoto Tower. I got a shot of it as we walked back to Kyoto Station.

I wish I took pictures of the mochi I bought! I love Kyoto mochi. It looks like a won ton pi mochi folded over the filling. The mochi is kind of thin so you can see the filling. It’s delicious. I love the black sesame flavor. Check out this blog, she took a picture of the mochi I’m talking about!

Dinner Bentos for the train ride back to Tokyo. Tasted good! Kind of funny that both our full meals were train station bentos. Hmm…food post coming soon!

No breakfast today. But our dinner made up for that and for Shibuya! Lunch was a bit of a letdown. We didn’t know where to eat so we ended up in Tokyo Station and ate at an Italian Risotto place called Riso Canovietta, it was so junk. I’ll still share the pictures…

This one was mine. Bacon with spinach and carbonara risotto I think. It was that memorable (not). It was bland and disappointing.

Tea time! Well more like coffee time for us. This was a nice little afternoon pick-up in the middle of shopping. A cute cafe in the middle of a very expensive mall, there were a lot of young housewives enjoying their afternoon tea. How lucky…this Kristian’s dessert. He enjoyed it!

We headed back to the apartment after the garden and shopping because we wanted to rest but mostly because we wanted our new wifi device. I know, we’re too reliant to the internet. We got to the apartment and the owner respected our privacy enough to hide it outside of the apartment in his gas closet thing…it was great. Older wifi unit but worked great. We were ecstatic. I don’t know about you but when I get back home after a long day, I don’t tend to head back out. This happened to us too. We finally decided to grab dinner across the street from our apartment. We found a super hole in the wall Chinese restaurant and decided to give them a try. Oh my god. It was such a great decision. By far my favorite restaurant of the trip, which is kind of sad but I don’t care. IT WAS GREAT. The waitress was an older lady and she was very nice to us (much needed after our previous day) and the food was delicious. Let me share…

Can they bring this place to Hawaii? Please?

This dish is as simple as it looks. Scrambled eggs with edamame and shrimp. The eggs were cooked perfectly, not runny or overcooked. The seasoning was probably just salt but it was perfectly seasoned, the edamame was a nice touch and the shrimp was perfectly cooked. It was delicious.

Chicken Karaage – delicious and tender. So good.

Okay how Chinese is this? Lettuce in fried rice, I love it. The lettuce is cooked just to a quick wilt so it maintains its crunch. The seasoning was on point and really hit the spot.

I AM DROOLING LOOKING AT THESE PICTURES. This is their tan tan men and it was so so so good. It was my favorite bowl of noodles in Japan. Perfectly seasoned broth and perfectly cooked noodles. Gosh, it was just a perfect bowl of comfort. I am half compelled to fly back out to Japan to eat this. Really.

Mapo Tofu – at first, we told her we didn’t order this. She nicely told us it came with the food we ordered. Was good! Spicy and delicious. What a perfect way to end day 6….

Gosh, we had such a hard time thinking of where to go for dinner this night. We finished Disneyland pretty early and walked back towards the train station when we decided to walk through the Ikspiari Mall and I am SO glad we did! I didn’t realize this mall was Disney owned at first. We first headed to the food court but there was limited choices and not a lot of English menus around. We found a Krispy Kreme and had to eat some. Check out Kristian’s donut…

Sakura Donut! Pretty right? He seemed to enjoy it. It looks a bit too sweet for me…but that’s just me. The pre-dinner dessert was followed by a dinner at Hakata Ippudo. This is a pretty good ramen chain in Japan. My first experience in this restaurant was in New York. I wish they would open this in Hawaii!

Seasoned Bean Sprouts

Pickled Ginger

Pickled Mustard Plant

The classic ramen

I got the one with everything, of course. The black liquid is probably the black garlic oil. This bowl of noodles was good. Nothing that knocked my socks off but definitely a nice bowl of noodles. They were very fast and efficient, glad we came to this restaurant for dinner!

Three must go-to stores at this mall:

Disney Store: Why? If you’re looking for tsum tsum and a lot of the more traditional Disney stuff, go to this store. Big store, good selection!

Natural Kitchen: I think I might have bought out their entire stock. This is a very very very very (very?) cute kitchen item store. It’s ALSO a 100 yen store. I was in heaven. The cutest kitchen accessories for 1, 2 or 3 dollars. I didn’t want to leave! I bought tons of stuff. I love this store. Good thing I didn’t hold back, I didn’t find this store anywhere else.

Laurel: This store is a bit like a bath and body works shop but very minimalistic and simple, nothing over-powering. They had an aroma diffuser running outside of their store and it just drew me in. It was such a wonderful scent and I was so tempted to buy it. But I knew I didn’t have an aroma diffuser at home so I left sadly. As the days went by, the scent never left my mind so I found the another location of the store in Harajuku. THANK GOD. It was a bit hard to find but I totally bought the oils (Savon and Cherry) and haven’t regretted it a bit. In fact, I’m fretting about what to do when I run out of this oil. I’m crazy like that. If Laurel came to Hawaii, I would be in heaven.

Day 5 is Shibuya and it is the post I am dreading to write! It was a really bad day, the worst day of the trip so I’m not exactly looking forward to talking about it. But it must be done! Hope you are all doing well!