Kyoto Day 2

For our second day in Kyoto, we were a bit more organized thanks to Scott. We told him the sights we wanted to see, and he figured out the best way to navigate ourselves to that location. We started the morning by visiting Nijo-jo Castle, which was a fairly quick jaunt from our hotel. In my opinion, this has been the least impressive castle that we’ve visited. Instead of being built on a hill with a huge foundation made up of stonewalls, this was a sprawling one story structure. Tokugawa Ieysu built the castle in 1603.

Nijo-jo Castle

At Nijo-jo, we did get to see what a guardhouse would have looked like. None of the other castles that we’ve been to so far have had one. As with most castle and temple related structures, it was a fairly large building. There used to be nine guardhouses at Nijo-jo with two groups of fifty samurai guarding the castle at all times.

We made the decision to not go into this castle to save time and money and instead just walked around the grounds. There were plenty of sights to see around the grounds with lots of explanations of what everything was and why it was significant. At some point, I realized that a lot of the descriptions said ‘Important Cultural Significance’ or something similar to that phrase. I’m surprised it took me so long to recognize this as everything in Japan is very old, and all the buildings and everything contained within them can be traced back for centuries.

Dressed & ready to become Ramen masters!

After spending some time wandering around the grounds, we made our way to the Ramen Factory for our ramen noodle cooking class. I was super excited about this class and was really looking forward to enjoying my ramen. I got the class where we made ourselves the whole soup and not just the noodles. We began by rolling and tying our chicken up so that it could be boiled. Our chef took care of this for us.

Next, we were given the ingredients for the ramen: flour and saltwater. We sifted the flour, made a mountain, put a hole in the center, and poured 1/3 of our salt water into the flour to start mixing. We poured the rest of the water in in two batches while continuing to stir/ mix with our hands. Once everything was mixed, we took it out and began kneading it before doing the 100 punches and kneading. We had to flatten the dough out a bit, punch it 20 times, knead once, and repeat until you got to 100. I decided I’m pretty much a wimp because my hand did not enjoy that experience, and I didn’t punch it nearly as hard as what our chef showed us.

Then, we rolled it into a snake and flattened it before using a machine to flatten it even more. Each of us rolled our noodles through the machine twice to get thinner noodles. The last step with the noodles before cooking them was to put them through the part of the machine that cut them.

Cooking our noodles.

Before we could cook our noodles, we were given back our chicken. We had to cut the string off and cut it into pieces. We were then given a torch to do a final cook on our chicken. You could use the torch as much or as little as you liked. If you wanted the skin to be crispy, then you used it more. If you were like me and had no plans to eat the skin, then you used the torch as a novelty. We also had to mix our soup base. We could choose between chicken or fish broth or use a combination of either. Then you chose your flavorings: Miso, soy sauce, or salt. Our chef took these to put on the stove for a quick boil.

Finished product

We were finally ready to cook our noodles. They had what looked like a fryer filled with boiling water and baskets. We placed our noodles into the baskets and stirred the noodles for 50 seconds. We drained them and gave them a couple of good shakes. We added the noodles to our bowls, dumped our broth mixture on top, and returned to our table to add the chicken and whatever other toppings we desired. The noodles were absolutely delicious. I used a bit too much miso mix in my broth, so that it was too salty to eat by itself, but it did add delicious flavoring to my noodles. Overall, I’d say the cooking class was a hit with everyone.

We did learn that the temple that the cooking class was across from was closed to the public because some diplomat from the G20 summit was visiting. There were three police busses that we could see in the parking lot and a heavy police presence on the street in front of it. Luckily we were still able to pass to get to the class and back to the train station.

After the class, we set off in search of some bridges that Scott wanted to see. He was rather disappointed as they weren’t much to look at. So, we headed straight for Fushimi Inari Taisha. Besides Himeji-jo Castle, this has probably been one of my favorite experiences. There are thousands of Torii, shrine gates, at this complex. They are placed right next to one another, so that it gives a sense of having a roof overhead. There are walking paths underneath them. The paths close to the entrance are very crowded with people gawking at the Toriis and taking photos of themselves dressed in their Kimono rentals. The further up the mountain you go, the more the people thin out.

We decided to go to the top. There are tons of tiny shrines along the way. The tree coverage and shadows from the Torii give it a mysterious air. The fox statues standing guard at the entrances to the shrines and start of the Torii gates don’t make it any less mysterious. The fox is considered a messenger of the gods, and the Japanese view them as sacred creatures rather than sly and cunning.

The hike up to the top of the mountain was 4km along a paved walkway under the Toriis. Close to the top, there were a couple of different trail options, and thankfully the owner of a shop pointed us up the easier trail. We took the opposite trail back down and were very glad that we didn’t have to hike it up!

By the time we got back down it was getting to be late in the afternoon. We headed back to Kyoto station and decided to have dinner there. We had a second meal of noodles for the day and topped it off with ice cream on our way back to our hotel. I’m not sure what kind of ice cream we got, but it wasn’t vanilla. It actually was pretty good once you got used to the idea th