Down By The River, Late in the Evening

Alisa, Ingram, Colleen (at Kyodai for her Junior Year Abroad on a Mitsubishi Scholarship - yes, the same company that makes the cars) and I went to eat sushi last night.

First off, we went down to Sanjo with our bikes. One of us (I won't mention who) never knew how to ride a bike, so it was quite interesting to see how s/he handled it. Quite nicely! Good job.

Rode down along the Kamo-Gawa to get there and parked our bikes at Starbucks. Now then, there are two places where one can park a bike between Sanjo and Shijo and pretty much guarantee that it won't get impounded. First is the Sanjo Starbucks. They cordon off an area for the bikes so its like "Parking for Starbucks Customers Only" but no one pays attention to that. The second place is this little alley off of Shijo.

Our main purpose was to go eat sushi. I have not eaten sushi since I got here (go ahead, gasp all you want) and needless to say, when Ingram and Alisa suggested sushi, I was totally game for it. It gets better. We all went to this place where they have the sushi on a conveyor belt, and each plate (with either two pieces of sushi or a bunch of rolls) go for 105 yen each:



I have to say, it was the most fun eating sushi ever since I first tried it. It reminded me of the scene in the Mr. Bean movie where he and Natalie Portman went to Go! Sushi in London (it actually exists, but I never went inside) and his tie got stuck in the conveyor belt. What was cool was at this place, you actually had booths for your party, and the conveyor belt just plodded along the booths. There was even a little fountain with hot water and a box of green tea sachets for your tea. Cold tea and water was self service. If you placed a special order, then it would come down the conveyor belt on a plate that had your table number on it.

None of us placed a special order, but Ingram and I were curious about natto. Natto is made up of fermented soybeans - the stuff that is left over. According to Alisa's former host mother - who had a wet plate of it every morning for breakfast - it made you stronger. According to the members of my forum, it is the most disgusting thing on the planet. Alisa said it wasn't that bad; so when she recognized a natto roll coming down the conveyor belt, I took it. There were two rolls, so Ingram and I each took one. Ingram kinda looked at it warily, but I figured down the hatch!

Bad, bad, bad idea.

It has the most disgusting aftertaste I have ever had in my life. The taste and the smell was so bad - and took you by surprise so much ,since it was a gradual taste - it practically permeated my brain. I am sitting there making faces, sputtering, and trying to eat it because I thought spitting it out was much more gross (half-chewed natto roll? EWW). Ingram looks at me, natto roll in his chopsticks, with a look of horror on his face.

Oops. I think I scared the poor guy. Colleen tried some too and Alisa ate the rest. The look on Colleen's face was classic.

Natto may look innocent, but it is a deadly, deadly thing. It is worse than Sodexho cafeteria food.








Blech. Amongst the wierder things on the conveyor belt (cheesecake that looked like deep fried sponge cake, anyone?) something caught my eye:










Hamburger sushi. Or rather, itty bittie hamburger patties on rice with a dollop of mayonaisse on it. Alisa told me there is a difference between "hambaga" and "hambagu" (I think that's the katakana for it) - one is just the patty, the other is a actual hamburger. I had two plates of it - quite tasty. This was a time to try new things; at 105 yen a plate it's not like one is losing so much. Refer to the natto mini-escapade. Nonetheless, I polished of the following "tower of glory" - 9 plates of sushi.

Afterwards, we went around Teramachi and Shinkyogoku (covered shopping arcades within Sanjo-Shijo-Kawaramachi) in search of crepes. Since the crepe stand were closed, we ended up at Cafe Independants, a cafe in the basement of a building with really cool desserts. Presentation was awesome; it reminded me of the Waltz back home. Kathy would like this place. They have a website too, so I am able to get there again, as we were walking around trying to find a place for dessert.

While eating dessert, we were debating our next move. Go to a bar, or buy something and go to the river? We walked around for a bar, but they were filled mostly with creepy, sleazy gaijin (a topic for a later post, possibly) so we decided to go for the "get something to drink and go to the river." First, we took photo stickers. The machines are WAY better than the ones home. I need to get a photo sticker album now.

Everyone that is probably uner the age of 30 goes to the Kamogawa at the Sanjo crossing. We plunked our bums down (after running into some Kyodai people at the liquor store, no less - Kyoto is a SMALL city); Ingram had "One Cup of Sake" (a glass vial filled with exactly one cup of sake), Alisa and Colleen had beer and I had this thing called Chu-Hi: made by Kirin, it's like a malt liquor thing with peach, or various other flavors. It just tasted like peach soda, which I liked.

Sanjo at Kamogawa reminded me of Union Square. There was a group of Japanese people playing African/Aboriginal music on the conga-drum things and a dijderidoo (the Australian pipe). Some in the group were swinging batons or flags like they were at a rave, minus the glowsticks. At one point, the sticks were on fire, which made the effect even more interesting. To prove that Kyoto is again a small place, I ran into more classmates on Sanjo.

It was getting a bit late, and there was this old Japanese man walking amongs the small groups, chatting about nothing, but more to practice his English. Since we had to go to the bathroom before Starbucks closed (as it was the closest Western toilet around) we decided to leave. We rode back up the river on our bikes, and I pushed my bike up the steps with no problem at all - there are motion sensor lights on the houses along the steps. When I finally got home, I took a look at my watch - it was midnight. I had hardly realized it, since there are still so many people around. Kyoto may be small, but it is surely kicking.