Own Your Encore

We continue to explore!  Saturday we went to the Higashiyama area in Kyoto. This is a busy tourist area but we headed to some small calm museums. We started at the Shibori Museum run by a family who have a long history in shibori. The technique we were shown involves plucking very small pinches of…

The food edition. Starting with the Kyoto street market food stalls. One of the first stalls we saw offered Nukazuke- Japanese fermented vegetables that are made using rice bran and yeast! Jeanette said her mom used to make these in a pickling crock. The Japanese have many seasonings, pickled and fermented foods that we typically…

We started with a hike to the iconic Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine grounds… along with a few hundred others. We were not here as devotees but wanted to hike the wooded slopes of  Mount Inari. The famous vermilion torii gates are impressive and there are statues of foxes holding symbolic items all along the trail.…

We started with a visit to the – wrapping with a square cloth – furoshiki maker Musubi. Then wandered thru the Pontocho district in Nakagyo Ward, it is a historic narrow alley running along the Kamo River. We enjoyed the traditional architecture and local charm. The Pontocho Kaburenjo theatre, circa-1927 is a performing arts venue…