Food in Japan, Part 6

I'm going to combine food posts for this one, so there aren't a ton of them running around the site... ;;  (I'm late on these anyways, so I guess it doesn't matter >__<...)

So, Day 8 we traveled to Kyoto on the Shinkansen ^ ^

Breakfast this time was a buffet inside our hotel.  There were some interesting foods... but the hall was huge and gorgeous ^ ^

Shumai o_o

Meat and... potatoes?

Fish, assumedly Japanese-style breakfast~ No, we didn't eat it.

Weird jelly... soup thing... It was pretty good, though.

Also, I saw these cute bunny-shaped pastries at the store in the hot springs later.  I'm not sure where this bunny came from, but it's really cute ^w^

Although this isn't really food, yesterday Tiffy saw a Denny's, and this morning I managed to get a picture.  I dunno, I think it's kind of weird that they have Denny's here?  I wouldn't imagine Japanese people eating that kind of stuff.  But then, maybe they made it healthier.  It's interesting... but it wasn't interesting enough for us to want to try it ^ ^;

At the shinkansen train station, we got some drinks for the road from the vending machine.  Tiffy got the grapefruit water, which was surprisingly pretty good: it had a light grapefruit taste, and wasn't too sweet or sour.  I got the houjicha (houji tea), which is a roasted tea.  I wasn't sure what it was, but I realized later that I have teabags of houjicha at home ;;  I've just never had it cold.

We had donburi, mixed rice, for lunch.  Mine was chicken, and Tiffy's was steak (although hers looked a lot like a salad).  We got udon noodles and picked vegetables on the side, and this interesting green tea and chocolate dessert that consisted of green tea mousse on top, yellow cake, and a layer of chocolate paste.

We spent the evening shopping in Gion and geiko/maiko scouting :3  Meanwhile, we saw a lot of really cute sweets.  I like how our eyes are just naturally attracted to sweets... so bad!  But you can't really help it, because the sweets are so cute and pretty in Japan, and most of them are also really tasty.

These are yatsuhashi, the cute rice flour pockets filled with flavored paste, that we've sampled way too many times.  We actually never bought a package, because we didn't think it would survive the trip =\

Weird vegetable things in some kind of powder.  We saw this at the market in Gion when Maiko-san was showing us around the area.

We saw this really shop with really cute sweets and absolutely adorable shop owners XD  They were this little old couple.  The lady looked like one of those cute grandmothers you see in anime, and the man also :3  They were so cute!  We bought some of the cute sugar candies and gummy fans.

After scouting successfully :3 we went to have some dinner.  We were originally planning to eat with Matt, Tracy, Daniel, and David, but they followed Maiko-san to a ramen shop in the market area, and Tiffy and I decided we'd had enough ramen for the trip and wanted to try something else.  So we went to a shop that sold unagi (eel) over rice.  It was pretty good, actually ^ ^  There was eel, pickled vegetables, and miso with clams.  Yes, I actually ate the clams.  And the eel, for that matter.

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Day 9: We went on a romantic sightseeing train and had some interesting BBQ, sort of similar to a Korean BBQ but a lot easier to cook XD  In the afternoon, we went to the Golden Pavilion and Nishijin, where the best silk in Japan is made :3

As usual, we had breakfast at the hotel.  Cereal, hash browns, and some other random things that we probably shouldn't be having for a healthy breakfast XP

On the left, a lychee; on the top, a pickled plum (ume); on the right, a pickled cucumber; on the bottom, some kind of candied fig.

After looking around the gorgeous Golden Pavilion, we walked around the shopping area next to it.  One specialty they had was tofu ice cream, which Maiko-san recommended to us :3  We had a choice between ice cream topped with some red bean and rice flour balls, and a 5-layered cone... so of course we had to try all 5 flavors in this gigantic cone XD  The top was tofu flavored, then green tea, apple mango, vanilla, and red bean (hidden inside the cone).  I think we all liked the tofu, which tasted basically like frozen creamy soy milk.  David, Daniel, Matt, and Tracy also got the 5-layer cone.

It was really messy to eat, haha~  We seriously ate the whole thing in about 10 minutes, since it was melting all over us.  Apple mango was also pretty good, and of course the other 3 more "usual" flavors were yummy :3

Lunch was, again, at this BBQ~

Yum, raw meat XP

Lookie, fire :3  Cooking our meats.

Our attempt to feed the flame with onions XD

Our dinner was a Kyoto banquet dinner at the western-style hotel with a hot springs.  There was an appetizer of ground daikon (radish) in the purple flower bowl, some sukiyaki, pickled vegetables, sashimi, fish, tempura, egg pudding with meat inside, chazuke (the rice with soup broth poured in), and watermelon for dessert.   It was really good XD  Okay, I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Sukiyaki, raw.

Sukiyaki, cooked~

Egg pudding, with some... surprises inside.

Chazuke.