Kyoto, Japan - Day 2

What we did:
- Woke up around 9am after another refreshingly long sleep, grabbed some quick American adjacent breakfast at the hotel and headed off for a day of temple tours. There’s lots of places to rent kimonos to tour the grounds, and a large portion of people did. We decided cultural appropriation wasn’t on the bingo card for the day so we stuck to the Nikes and western garb.
- We started at the Kiyomizu-dera temple in the Higashiyama Ward. Definitely found the tourists!! But super cool neighborhood of shops/restaurants leading up to massive temples overlooking the whole city and surrounding mountains. Great care to preserve the nature around it too - we’re like 10 days early on the fall colors they advertise, but still gorgeous.
- From there we headed to the Kodajji temple grounds, meandering through well kept gardens and cool buildings.
- We then grabbed a late lunch and without question the best noodle based soup we have ever had. The japanese really need to show the Italians a thing or two on how to make good noodles.
- After lunch, we took a taxi over to walk the “Philosophers path”, which was a wildly underwhelming stream ringed by leafless trees. S/O TripAdvisor on that rec 🤡. However, this did allow us to accidentally stumble into the Higashiyama Jisho-ji temple and garden grounds and that was incredibly worth it! Super cool temple, a bamboo forest and panoramic overlook of the city right at golden hour made for a great find.
- Sufficiently cultured, we setoff to find a dinner spot. After almost putting a downpayment on our “balling out” meal for some Kobe wagyu steaks - Trent realized the $70 steaks were actually $70 per 2.5 ounces of steak… we quickly audibled to a more affordable conveyor belt sushi spot! The concept definitely hit suburban America in recent years, but pretty fun to do at an original spot. With a quick tap of the ipad in front of you, food launches down the conveyor belt to your plate.
- From there we wandered through the dreamy Gion district - pretty much the epitome of the atmosphere you envision a traditional Japanese neighborhood to feel like. We came across the Common One Bar and potentially now our favorite bar we’ve ever been to (yes, lots of “best ____ we’ve ever had” declarations this trip). You enter through an old wooden door off the main street, down a long thin rocky path into this traditional courtyard of gardens/ponds. A man met us at the front and escorted us through a few hallways into this dimly lit back room, big wooden bar and stacks of Japanese whiskey. The bartenders were the ultimate craftsmans, taking insane amounts of methodical care for each drink. Stephs matcha brandy cocktail and Trent’s old fashioned were phenomenal. Great vibes!! Off to bed after another successful day.

What we ate:
- Hotel breakfast: Connected to our hotel is a Boulangerie. Quick eggs, breads, and coffee and we’re good to start the day!
- Gokago: After getting lost, we determined we deserved a matcha break at a hip matcha cafe. Ordered their specialty matcha lattes where we were able to watch them prepare the matcha for us. They were delicious and gave us a nice boost for a full day of temple viewing.
- Oudon Izakaya Mannaka: After being turned away from many lunch spots in the area due to fully booked reservations, we found this little gem on a side street. The most amazing udon noodles - we did not know we were udon fans until now! Trent got the specialty tsururu udon noodles with wagyu beef and pork. Steph got the “hot egg meat udon” (translated) where the noodles come in one bowl, broth in another, raw egg in another, and chilli oil and you mix them all together in one bowl and dip your noodles to eat it. Both were amazing!! We will definitely be chasing this dish/flavor the rest of the time here. We’ll see if this place was special or if udon here really just rocks.
- Kaiten Sushi Ginza Onodera: We struggled to find dinner. We wanted to do izakaya but were struggling to find one that looks good. Izakaya simply translates to Japanese small plates, so when you search for izakaya, every izakaya place could be selling something different - burgers, sushi, weird fish stuff, teppanyaki, Italian food, etc. After doing a lot of research and not finding anything we were excited about, we set out to find this really popular gyoza spot that we had passed the other day. After trying two of the gyoza spots and finding that both had over 2 hour waits, we stumbled into a conveyor belt sushi restaurant..because why not! A couple of tempura chicken and sashimi nigiri later, we quickly stumbled our way back out, content on calling that a failure and licking our wounds at a bar. We found ourselves at the Common One Bar and the night really turned around for us!
- Gyoza no Osho: After having a very limited sushi dinner, Trent needed sustenance so we found a fast food gyoza joint before heading to bed. Can’t forget the number one rule of vacation - feed Trent!

Fun facts:
- All Japanese bars charge a cover fee. They don’t want to increase the costs of drinks so they adjust the cover to inflation
- Wagyu cows in Japan are purebred and kept on a strict diet of high-quality barley, wheat bran, rice bran, and corn feeds for 650 days. There are also strict restrictions on how many cows a farmer can have and the type of land they have to have access to. Due to its fattines, they only serve as small bites and not the US 12-16oz. Each cut it’s rated like a diamond, with a A5 Wagyu running almost $40 an ounceLeggi altro