It’s Wednesday afternoon and I have just returned to work after a week-long holiday in the Kansai region. Whilst we are now over a month out of lockdown, on Saturday the governor of Tokyo urged all residents to refrain from making non-essential trips to other prefectures. Unfortunately I was already firmly planted in the Kyoto prefecture at the time of this announcement so there was little that I could do aside from enjoy the rest of my holiday.

I took the night bus at eleven o’clock last Wednesday night from Tokyo to Kyoto where I was staying with my friend Akira. Akira used to live in Tokyo and he was my first friend when I arrived in January but he left in March to work on an organic farm in Nara. He subsequently began a ten-day pilgrimage throughout the Kansai region. On his travels, he met a woman who owns a number of vegan restaurants and he now lives in Kyoto and helps out at one of her restaurants.

Anyway, I met up with Akira at the bus stop outside his house at six o’clock the following morning and after dumping my things at his flat, we took the train to Lake Biwa. As you might remember from blog post number six, Kyoto is actually the only place outside of Tokyo that I have already visited. Luckily there is a lot to do so we began the day by taking the train to Lake Biwa. Lake Biwa is a large freshwater lake in the Shiga Prefecture, northeast of Kyoto. We swam in the lake, which was surprisingly warm and then we went out for a vegan lunch.

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Day two: we went to Uji. Set in a green valley to the south of Kyoto, Uji is a beautiful city famous for its matcha. The streets are lined with tea shop after tea shop, occasionally a matcha bakery or perhaps a restaurant with matcha green noodles or dumplings. Basically the streets are quaint and beautiful and the smell of matcha drifts out as you walk along them. It is heavenly.

We started off at the Byodo-In Temple, which is a Buddhist temple built in the year 998 and which features on the back of the ten yen coin. Within the temple, there is a museum so we walked around this and then sat outside under the wings of the temple, meditating and watching the rain. This was a particularly peaceful part of the day although I do still struggle with meditation as I get very easily distracted, then normally give up and have a nap. So this is basically what I did, but I think Akira meditated for a while longer.

For the rest of the day, we wandered around Uji, ate some cold soba noodles for lunch and then we went to Nakamura Tokichi, a tea house established in 1854. Here we splurged on some matcha goodies, which we ate in the tea house gardens. Here are some pictures of my pricey parfait.

On day three, I took myself off on a solo overnight trip to Nara. Nara is about an hour’s train journey from Kyoto. Given that the borders are currently closed to international tourists, it was unsurprising that I was the only guest at my hostel. To a normal person, having an entire hostel to yourself for the night might seem like a good thing. However, aged 22, I am embarrassed to say that I have never actually spent a night home alone. It terrifies me. If I’m at home, or at university, or basically anywhere, it has never been an issue because I can always run off to a friend or family member’s house to stay the night. But in Nara, I knew no one. The hostel owner left me the keys, told me I could check out whatever time I liked the following day as no one would be coming back and then went on his way. As the front door clicked shut, the butterflies kicked in.

The hostel was really nice. I had a big living room, a big kitchen, and a six bedroom dormitory all to myself. And you will be happy to hear that after checking each bunk bed, bathroom and cupboard for monsters and murderers, I slept soundly through the night.

I was able to distract myself very easily by going out for dinner. The hostel was a ten minute walk from Trip Advisor’s number one restaurant in Nara, an Italian place called Nino. I seriously considered dedicating an entire blog post to my evening at Nino because I don’t think I will ever eat a restaurant so good ever again.  Given that this was my second trip to the Kansai region, I had previously thought it would be my last. Kansai has a lot of beautiful cities but there are a lot of other places that I also want to visit. I can wholeheartedly say that I will absolutely be going back to Nino (hopefully with Jane, Guy and their credit card but we shall see).

It wasn’t just the food, it was the entire experience. I walked into the restaurant, where I was greeted by Mayumi, a woman who clasped my hands with hers and asked me for my name. She led me to the counter, behind which a beady-eyed Japanese man was chopping and sauteing and opening and closing the pizza oven all in very quick succession. Nino stopped what he was doing and also took both my hands in his, thanked me for coming and introduced himself. Much like my Japanese, his English was limited but we were able to communicate a little. I told him I lived in Tokyo and he quickly introduced me to the man seated next to me at the counter, who had once also lived in Tokyo. This man lived in Osaka but regularly drove over to Nino whenever he got the chance. It was his favourite restaurant. It’s now also mine.

I only learned this recently, but many Italians claim that some of the best Italian food you will ever eat is in Japan. Japanese chefs dedicate themselves to their food in a way that is not seen anywhere else in the world. You will rarely eat at a restaurant that serves a variety of different food. If you want tonkotsu ramen, you will eat at a tonkotsu ramen restaurant. If you want a bowl of soba, you will eat at a soba restaurant. The same with sushi, tempura, curry or anything else Japanese. Each chef masters their trade and then makes solely this.

It was the same with Nino. He studied cooking in Italy for a year and a half when he was twenty three. He is now about to turn fifty and he has been perfecting it ever since. I ordered a glass of wine (it was a Saturday night after all) and a half portion of both pizza and pasta. Whilst Nino prepared mine and the other customers’ meals, he chatted away with the guests, gave me a brochure on the history of the Nara prefecture and Mayumi brought me the visitors’ book to sign.

Whilst I was eating my food, which was delicious, Mayumi brought me a gift. She had written my name in Kanji (Chinese characters that are used in Japanese). The characters she had used meant love and new, but they were supposedly read as “Annie”. After I finished my meal, Mayumi came up to me with another present. It was a laminated piece of paper telling me that they offered free dessert to customers on their birthdays. At the bottom, it read: we understand that you may not be able to come back on your birthday so we would like to offer you free dessert today instead. I of course took them up on this offer and minutes later found myself tucking into some delicious panna cotta on the house.

After some extensive discussions about Nino’s time in Italy, whether he will throw a party for his fiftieth next year and my life aspirations, he asked if we could take a picture. Mayumi, Nino, and the waitress ran around to my side of the counter for a selfie. The selfie was quickly printed out and I was given a copy whilst another was placed in a rack of all the customers before me. The waitress looked about my age and I asked Nino if she was his daughter, to which he laughed and said, “not daughter but like daughter.” I later discovered that she was a university student who had only been working there for a month. I wasn’t surprised that Nino considered her a daughter after just one month, seeing as I was only there two hours and I kind of felt like his daughter as well.

I ordered a drink after dinner just so that I could stay for longer. Nino works five days a week yet he is so happy to be on his feet cooking all day. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so genuinely happy to meet other people. When I finally made my way out of the restaurant, my three new friends followed me to the door. Nino gave me a shiny five yen coin, which symbolises good luck in Japan. Nino followed me outside and waved me off. Every ten seconds or so, I would turn back around and sure enough Nino was still there, frantically waving his arms as I walked away. I reached the traffic lights about one hundred metres from the restaurant. Squinting, I could still make out the grinning man and his arms waving at me as I walked away. I was laughing out loud as I walked back to the hostel.

On my second day in Nara, I walked up Mount Wakakusa. Nara is famous for its deer and whilst some can be quite docile, many are not. At the top of Mount Wakakusa, I was admiring the view when I turned around to see a deer’s head in my backpack, munching its way through my ticket out of the park. Luckily I was able to say “deer ticket tabemashita” to the man at the bottom and laughing, he let me through the gate.

One thing that I have learned since being in Japan is that I am an old-Japanese-lady magnet. For some reason, they love me. I’m often making elderly friends when soaking in the public baths, or sitting in cafes or restaurants. I don’t actually need to say or do anything. I just smile at them and they grin back at me and the friendship goes from there really. This is how I met Mitsuyo.

I was queueing for a soba noodle restaurant (Sobadokoro Kitahara) once I’d reached the bottom of Mount Wakakusa. It was a tiny, quaint house with a small queue forming outside. It was here that my sixty-eight year old friend Mitsuyo began talking to me. By the time the waitress came round to ask how big our group was, it had been decided that we would be eating together. Mitsuyo could not speak English and I surprised myself with the extent to which I could stretch out my conversational Japanese.

Once seated on the tatami mat, we discussed our family members as this is one of few conversation topics I can have in Japanese. Mitsuyo is also the middle child of three and now has two children in their thirties who are yet to flee the nest. She is also maybe from Kyoto, Osaka or Nara. She mentioned each of these cities a few times. One I think she is from and one I think she lives in, but I’m not really sure. She told me some stories about the deer, which I didn’t fully understand but I smiled and nodded and she smiled and nodded back. She told me what to order and then she gave me a map of the area and some candy floss. I gave the candy floss to Akira once I was back in Kyoto and it was apparently delicious.

After the meal, I wasn’t entirely sure if I had committed to spending the rest of the afternoon with Mitsuyo or not. I needed to go back to the hostel and I’d envisioned a nice afternoon of sitting in the sun, reading my book. Eventually with the help of Google Translate and a few passersby, we were able to communicate this to each other. Mitsuyo asked for my address in Tokyo and I wrote it on the back of a receipt for her. A number of Japanese goodbye phrases were said by both of us and after a series of bows, we went our separate ways. I headed to the Former Daijoin Temple Garden, where I sat on the bridge below and read my kindle for an hour or so. Very tranquil!

Back in Kyoto, I met up with Akira at Sanjo station, which is right by the river. Groups of people were dancing around in circles, drinking and chatting so I bought some tinnies and we mingled with some other people who were sitting along the river. I had the absolute best time. Everyone was so friendly and we met people from Reading, Ireland, Mexico, Paraguay, Japan and the Netherlands. We ended up staying at the river for hours and by the end of the evening, I had decided that I was permanently moving to Kyoto. Once I sobered up, I was less sure about this decision but I have been speaking to a coworker today who is thinking of making the transition to the Kyoto branch and I am very tempted to tag along.

Monday was my final day in Kyoto. Akira went to work in the cafe and I went to the onsen that I visited during my last trip, followed by the most beautiful soba noodle lunch I will probably ever eat. I sat by a big window that looked out at the rainy, tumultuous river and I sipped roasted tea for a few hours. In the evening, I ate dinner made by Akira at the cafe and then at eleven o’clock that night, I popped back onto the night bus to Tokyo. I had an incredible time in Kyoto and I will absolutely be back soon.