Kansai Japan 日本關西

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In this trip, we booked two restaurants for lunch/dinner. Other than Kitcho, we went to 八阪圓堂 to have tempura lunch. We specifically asked for bar seat but it turned out that nothing special to see, as they have a cover to block any spitting of oil and you cannot see the chef making the food. Their food is yummy, fresh and nice. We were attracted by their fish tempura......

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Yummy tempura....the corn is surprisingly good......

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More tempura.....fresh and crispy...see the fish...it looks like it is still alive

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They made them one by one so that each one is really hot, which gave us time to take photo.....

Btw, they have a sommerlier on site so you may get some nice wine too...

The last one is grapefruit sherbet. I think it is the season of grapefruit in Kansai, we met a number of dishes using grapefruit, both in Kitcho and here

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Next stop was Kyoto Imperial Garden...A place for seeing sakura or maple....Once it was the palace of the King of Japan and now it was a guesthouse for government use.

The area is huge with thick wall but the moat is rather narrow......some the later visited Nijojo is like a palace more.....

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It is a nice place to see maple tree changing colour.....in the afternoon, my wife went here to take pictures with wafuku

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At night, we went to Kiyomizu-Dera Temple (清水寺) to see the night scene of maple tree.....With the lighting, the view is totally different from that of the day.

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The night, the main temple and the maple tree with light make up a nice picture.

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Now comes to the last day in Kyoto. In the morning we went to Nijojo Castle (二夈城), a castle witnessing the rise and fall of Tokugawa era (德川幕府). As I mentioned before, it looks like a real palace, deep and wide moat, decent structure with functional offices for government official. It is sad that some spots did not allow photograph......

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The most important building in Nijojo is Ninomaru Palace (二之丸御殿), which was the government headquarter at that time. No photograph is allowed inside and you need to take off your shoes to enter. That was the place where the end of shogun happened (大政奉還)


Even the planter area around it was nice.....