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.
Posts
