Wandering Daydreams

Continuing from where we left off in the previous post, we headed back to Kawaramachi after our day trip to Arashiyama. On the way back to the Best Western Hotel to collect our luggage, we stopped by at Takashimaya to browse the "depachika", which refers to the basement of the department stores. In Japan, the basement floors of department stores is the place where foodstuff are sold, which is similar to our supermarkets here but with a much larger variety of items sold. Really love just browsing here as there is just such a large variety of food on display, including salads, sashimi, sushi, bento sets, yakitori, desserts and lots more. Just thinking of it is making me drool. As we'll be having a traditional kaiseki dinner at the ryokan, we only got one octopus salad to try. After collecting our luggage, we made our way to Hiiragiya Bekkan ( http://www.hiiragiya.co.jp/bekkan/en/ ), which is also within walking distance. Do note that Hiiragiya Bekkan is not the sam...

Today, we're heading over to Arashiyama for the beautiful scenery ^.^ Before heading out, we had already packed our belongings and checked out from the hotel as we will be staying at a traditional ryokan for our last night here in Kyoto. We just left our luggage with the hotel staff to collect later in the afternoon once we finish our sightseeing. From the station nearby our hotel, we took a train to the Hankyu Arashiyama station (220 yen each). Love the old style feel of the station and the station here was quite silent and peaceful, not many people around. Anyway, from here, it's a quite a short walk, about 5 to 10 minutes, to get to the Togetsukyo bridge. We were unsure of the way at first but luckily, we spotted some roadsigns showing us the way in English. Hankyu Arashiyama station For those who are unsure, you can basically walk straight on along the road from the entrance of the station as seen in the above right picture. Along the way, there are several ro...