There was a light rain as we walked to a small breakfast place near us. I had オムライス (omurice), which was mentioned with relative frequency in my Japanese language study materials. It’s seasoned rice wrapped in a thin omelet with ketchup. I’ll be looking up a recipe as it was delicious.
We took our time walking to Kiyomizu-dera Temple, which beautifully backs into green hills. I thought we’d enjoy this temple as it was the inspiration for the one featured in the animated rock-opera Inu-Oh. The temple was great, but unfortunately the rain didn’t last and it quickly heated up. This is one of the popular temples in Kyoto so the crowd was large but overall well-behaved. Stopping at the temple cafe to have shave-ice （かき氷） was exactly what we needed.
I planned to see more in this area, but there were just too many people. Instead we found some noodles (including kitsune udon), checked out Maruyama Park for a few minutes (beautiful, but too hot), got coffee (fancy pour over), and walked downtown. The beauty of downtown is that it’s filled with air-conditioned malls. We went to the Nintendo shop, Mandarake (hobby kits & vintage toys), and the Pokemon Center. In a time crunch we agreed on McDonalds for dinner. It’s worth trying the different items once, in this case the limited-time Jurassic burger, pineapple melon soda, and macarons.
The highlight of the day was GEAR, a non-verbal stage show. The five performers covered a gamut of dance, mime, magic, juggling, and “doll”, woven into a fever-dream plot involving a broken doll factory. The theatre is really small so all of the seats are good. It was very well executed and the projection mapping was outstanding. Soren said it’s the best thing we’ve done in Japan so far, and they would definitely see it again.
(21 970 steps)
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