Day two in Kyoto, the plan was to visit Fushimi Inari Taisha, Bambook Forest and so much more, but...maybe, here goes.
We headed out nice and early (a common theme I know), and caught the local train to Fushimi Inari Taisha. Famously known as the hundreds of very photogenic red tree gates that lead up the hills, next to a mountain shrine from the year 711. Here are some photos.
By the end of our visit here, the skies had opened for the first time on our trip to Japan and started pouring down on us. So with our spirits in the early stages of the dampening, we jumped back onto the train and travelled to the west side of Kyoto to the aptly named Kameyama Park Monument Path, or to us tourists the Bamboo Forest. As it was completely pouring down with rain, all the photos I took were on my phone. Before walking in though, I had some Tofu ice cream at Kotoimo Honpo.
Followed by the Bamboo Forrest
I'm sure the place is just wonderful when the weather is nice but at this stage our patience was being tested. So we continued to trek through the rain until we'd decided to just return to Kyoto and relax for the rest of the afternoon.
Hangry and wet we popped back into the market area, found a butcher with a backroom café where they sold their meats as part of the menu. We ordered a steak set each and then John cried. He cried out of happiness because we had just experienced the best steaks of our lives to this moment. Melt in the mouth good steaks. So if you're ever in Kyoto and enjoy a mind blowingly good hiro beef steak, make sure you visit Kyo no Onikudokoro Hiro. Just looking at their website is making me excited and depressed. Hiro beef is essentially Wagyu beef without all the source requirement. This is why it was delicious but didn't require a second mortgage.
Not my photo, but how else will you find it.
After dinner the group had a Karaoke night booked down the road at Karaoke Rainbow Kawaramachi, a supermarket of private karaoke room with unlimited drink packages. We opted for the 2hr package which cost us about JPY2600 per person. The short version of this story is that we drank entirely too much sake, decided one karaoke bar was not enough and seemingly stumbled drunkenly into another local bar 0PUB & SOUNDS, adopted by the locals and continued our pursuit of excessive sake drinking.
Apparently nobody remembers this photo being taken...
A crappy rainy touristy day, redeemed by a last minute food and excess drink save.
