Wednesday was my first solo day in Kyoto, as the last of my visiting siblings and friends left that morning. We had such fun together ( more on that later) but now it was time for me to do what I’ve been itching to do– get up at the crack of dawn and go out to the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. An hour bus ride and a quick walk in the woods led me here and it was magical. There is such a strange quality to the light. Later there would be hordes of people but for now it was all mine. I took quite a few pictures as I just could not believe my luck to be alone in such a gorgeous place.

After a meditative walk in the bamboo grove, I headed down to the river to see the boats slowly go by. Later I visited the Tenryu-ji-Jim Temple with its beautiful gardens ( and more bamboo).

Once again I was asked by a student to be interviewed about my stay in Kyoto. Returning to Kyoto, I met up with a new friend Gaji, who invited me for drinks at the Kawa Cafe overlooking the Kamogawa River. Gagi took this picture.After drinks, we headed for a secluded restaurant, called Yamabun, in Gion where Gagi is friends with the chef, Aoki. What a meal! Course after course. Three different kinds of sake and loads of fun as Aoki conversed with us while we ate and drank.

You would think the night would be over at that point, but no….we needed to go to one more place. A sushi bar in a back alley called Tomizusi, run by the talented sushi chef Nobuo. We sat there while he took a knife and made art work of a cucumber. Such a fun evening.

Despite all the sake and food, the next day I’m excited to meet another new friend Momoko. A post-grad student at Kyoto University, I met her like Gaji through my “lines in the water” before leaving home. She arrived at my apartment with the idea that we should rent beautiful kimonos and spend the day doing what we want but dressed in our finest. Why not! We head to a lovely kimono shop, Kinhare, where Mr and Mrs. Akiyama proceed to help us choose our finest. Mrs. Amiyama then carefully designs our hair style to go with the Kimono we have chosen.

This is the finished look but you probably can’t imagine all the layers and ties and hairspray that went into this! We take off in our kimonos and Momoko takes me to lunch at a place near my apartment called Wabiya Korekidou that only has one thing—Oyakodon. The dish translates to “mother and child” because the two proteins are chicken and eggs. Depending if you like raw egg or cooked egg, the server presents the dish and then stirs and stirs the egg into the hot broth until you are happy.

After lunch we go to a beautiful temple and have matcha and sweets.

Everywhere we go we get stopped and people ask to have their picture taken with us. It is such a fun experience. We really hated to return our lovely kimonos at the end of the day.

Before I end, I want to shout out to John, Virginia, MJ, Angela and Jim who were visiting here before my kimono days. We had so many great meals and fun times. This is one of our first meals together at Tenyu, a 10 seat Michelin one star tempura restaurant. So many small tempura dishes and all of them perfect. My birthday dinner before they left was celebrated at Mamechu in a private dining room on tatami mats. Many courses, some of which we knew and some we did not, but all delicious and loads of laughing