Downtown....in Kyoto

This morning I had to return to the bike shop to swap out the rental bike, so it seemed like a good excuse to spend some time downtown by myself.

Shopping is a popular activity here, so there is a serious amount of shopping 'infrastructure." I visited some of the big department stores, but no stories or photos. Basically there are many floors, and mostly there are small boutique sections with brand names, very expensive. The basement is a big supermarket but again it is very chic and expensive, we are told that most people shop there for gifts but not for home. At ten dollars a peach and forty for a melon, I can see why.

The big stores are located along a street that has a covered sidewalk, which also extends along several nearby streets. They have developed into long crowded pedestrian shopping zones. Here are a few views.



Some of the stores are weirdly western and seem geared toward tourists, but most are regular stores. I stopped at a pharmacy and had I wanted hair color or diet supplements, I would have had many choices!



In the middle of the shopping area there were also shrines and temples. This is Kyoto!



After a grocery store meal of prepared food - sushi, potato salad and sweet bean paste balls, I cycled back uptown and met up with the family. It had become another hot hot day, so the girls wanted to splash around. The river was pretty low, and neither of them wanted to play in the murky water. That didn't discourage Benna, she made her own splash fun in a little fountain, with the help of a towel we had brought along!



After a nice visit with our English-speaking neighbor, Jana and I went out for dinner and left the girls at the apartment. We wandered for a while before deciding on a place to eat. We were noodled out, and the meat places seemed boring, and there was no cheap sushi around. Eventually we found a place that looked not too expensive and based on the pictures outside, we had no idea what the food was all about! So, in we went.



Turns out "Okonomiyaki" is an Osaka-style food, and we are pretty close to Osaka. The table has a grill in the middle, and they bring you a pancake that is made of a mixture of ingredients. The pancake stays warm on the grill and you cut it up with a spatula and add spices on top. Jana didn't love it, but I thought it was great! we got one that was eggs and scallions and bread crumbs, the other was cabbage and shrimp and flour. Yummy.