Thursday, April 16, 2009

Life in Kyoto


We're in Kyoto, visiting temples filled with maples and cherry trees, admiring zen landscaping and wandering along tiny streets filled with houses with wooden gates hiding secret gardens. It's my Dad's birthday, so he was allowed to read me one of his own poems at lunchtime, in a tiny deserted restaurant decorated in a worryingly kitsch English country garden style and called "My Favorite". The food was excellent: stir fried pork, beautifully moist rice, miso soup and delicately flavoured tofu. He also wanted a rickshaw ride so we were carried by Yoshi, who'd been pulling tourists around the narrow streets for 11 years and had legs of steel. Yoshi taught us the Japanese word for maple and how to say "thank you" in Kyoto dialect.

10 comments:

Claire said...

Ah, blogging your dinner - that's more like it. Could we have a picture of this zen landscaping we're hearing so much about? Or perhaps Chris trying to engage geishas in conversation or meditating among some bonsais and raked gravel?

LottieP said...

As requested...

LottieP said...

Close, but no geishas. He has been up to his tricks, though; he's got the female concierge bringing him a birthday cake at 9pm tonight...

nmj said...

Okay, I have to say that I am madly jealous of you! All sounds wonderful.

Claire said...

I might have known. It's those twinkling eyes - they fall for it every time.

LottieP said...

Thanks, NMJ. It has been enjoyable, especially our visit to the island of Sado, which is worth a post of its own.

Claire - presumably you found this? I've never been able to find anything on the RBs, nor on Albania!, for that matter.

Claire said...

No, I hadn't seen that. Glancing at it, I can see myself spending far too many happy hours following all the links. The one I did look at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2007/feb/26/chasingscars

was rather unfair about Stump, I thought. Sorry, don't know how to do hyperlinks in comments.

Claire said...

I can't believe Robert King is now a professor of ancient languages!

Unknown said...

i want to hear the poem...

LottieP said...

That won't be necessary, GP.