Nagashi Somen (流しそうめん) in Kibune

Where: Kibune (north of Kyoto)

When: Saturday June 15, 2008

Info: Kibune is a small mountain town located about an hour from Kyoto. In the summer months it is a popular destination for kawadoko dining. This is involves eating your meal while seated on platforms suspended just above or near the flowing waters of the river. Kyoto is crazy hot in the summer and apparently, it can feel up to five degrees cooler when sitting on these platforms in Kibune! Oh, and the view is pretty amazing too!

We took a private train line to Kibune and then walked into the town. The road to the town with quite beautiful, lined with cedar forests on one side and the river on the other. The weather turned out to be cool and cloudy but luckily it didn't rain. We were looking for a specific restaurant (Hirobun) located near the beginning of the river restaurants, or in other words, closer to the top of the mountain. It was supposed to have one of the best views of any restaurant in Japan and it didn't disappoint. My jaw almost dropped when I saw where we were going to be eating! Check out the little waterfall!

I was a lot cooler on once we were on the platforms (Truthfully, I was freezing...) and I can imagine that in the August/September heat of Japan this would be REALLY nice. We had to wait for a while since they could only seat about 8 people at a time. All of these people were here for the nagashi somen.

Elspeth had heard about nagashi somen ('flowing noodles') somewhere and I went on an internet hunt to find a restaurant that served it. Nagashi somen is a summer food event where they send small bundles of somen noodles down a 'half-pipe' (traditionally made of bamboo) flowing with cold water. Most of the time this takes place at festivals but we managed to find a restaurant which specialized in it in this picturesque town.

When our turn finally arrived, we were seated in front of a counter and instructed to use the front 'trough'. Our neighbours had the far one and the pipe coming from above was for the four people farther down the counter. The restaurant worker then disappeared into a little shack and we got ready to catch our lunch.

Those little bundles of noodles move quick! I was so busy taking pictures and video that I missed my first bunch. Oh well, not to worry, there was plenty (more somen than I've ever eaten before!). You had to move your chopsticks fast but once you had a grip on the noodles, the little bundle was easy to pick up, dip into your sauce/broth and enjoy. 

The somen was delicious and the broth was fabulous but I think the real winner here was the view. It was gorgeous! 

Blogger is being difficult right now and is refusing to upload my video! So instead here's a link to Elspeth's video (which is better than mine anyways)

The end of the meal is signaled by a bundle of pink somen shooting down the pipe. It was flavoured with ume and shiso (not my fav) but a nice way to end an exciting meal. We said goodbye to the view and started our way back down the mountain.

We walked by a famous shrine in Kibune but weren't too enthusiastic about climbing to the top to find out what was there. Instead we decided to walk back to the train station, head back to Kyoto and contact some of Elspeth's friends.

(We passed some VERY straight cedar forests...and commented on how very Japanese they looked. No leaning trees here...)

(Restaurants facing the kamogawa river in Kyoto)

Later that night we caught up with Elysaar, Elspeth's friend from University. We grabbed some sushi for dinner and for dessert we headed to a pretty posh looking cafe. We chose this cafe because of their parfait selection. The menu had 164 different parfaits!!! And for fun (and for my benefit) Elysaar and Elspeth translated ALL OF THEM! We were there for quite a while but it was fun to look at some of the stranger options. We even wrote down potential choices on bits of napkin and then narrowed our choices down. I finally chose a berry/cheesecake parfait. Yum!

(Elysaar and Elspeth enjoying their parfaits!)

After eating and talking we headed out to find a game centre. Purikura was a must and we rocked the split screen/3 person shots. Elspeth also hacked the machine's website and got all six of the photos for free instead of the usual three. (She's like Dade Murphy, that one! HA!) 

Hilarious. A day of catching noodles shooting down a tube, eating on a platform over a river, parfaits, a shirt with my name on it, purikura, sushi and Kyoto?! Sounds pretty darn perfect. 

Stay tuned for an amazing story about the following day...think kimonos, make-up and the highest platform shoes I've ever worn...bet you're interested now. muhuuhaaahaaa!!

keep an eye on this blog.

I have a few posts to publish about the last weeks of my life in Japan...so keep checking the blog over the next couple of weeks. There are some really good posts, I promise!

Spectacular Shirakawa-go

Where: Takayama & Shirakawa-go

When: May 18-19, 2008

Info: Shirakawa-go is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Gifu Prefecture. It's a collection of Gassho-zukuri buildings. Gassho-zukuri means 'clasped hands' and that's what the roofs of the homes look like. The thatched buildings are designed this way to allow rain and snow to fall off of it. Most are now minshuku (family run inns) and as Justine wanted to see the Japanese countryside on her trip, I decided that a night in a gassho-zukuri inn would be cool.

We started our adventure by taking an early morning train to Takayama, which is the closest you can get to Shirakawa-go by train. We walked around the old streets and took lots of pictures. 

(The sake arrived in an overflowing masu and was served with some salt)

Takayama has a ton of sake breweries and you can identify them by the big balls of twigs hanging out front of the buildings. Every time I had gone to Takayama I'd wanted to try sake in a masu (little wooden drinking...box/cup?) but either someone had been sick (Elz) or it had been too hot (mom and dad). I knew this was going to be my last time in Takayama so I dragged Elz and Justine into a brewery.
We tried a sweeter sake and to be honest, those little boxes hold much more sake than they look like they can. I had only eaten a breakfast pastry that morning and it pretty much went straight to my head.

(me...soon to be drunk.)

All feeling a little tipsy, we decided that finding some lunch would be smart. We chose a famous ramen restaurant where I had eaten with Aaron and Tiffany. I remembered that the ramen had been delicious and they had played awesome rock/taiko music. Elz asked our waiter if they sold a cd of the music and he said yes. Unfortunately, when we asked him after eating, he said no....boo...

(Super rare beef sushi - OK, but not my favourite)

(Some of the most amazing ramen!)

Our bus to Shirakawa-go didn't leave for a while so we bought some snacks (sembei!) and roamed the stores. Justine got a kick out of the crazy Japanese fashions in one store (I think she could probably pull off that sparkly pink fedora!). When the bus to Shirakawa-go finally left, we found it was almost empty and by about 45 minutes in to the 2 hour ride, we had the bus to ourselves. I wasn't feeling too great (I think I was slightly allergic to the sake) so I slept for a bit and soon we were zooming through the mountains, across rivers and in and out of tunnels. We arrived in Shirakawa-go and discovered that our minshuku for the night, Magoemon was gorgeous.
We relaxed with some tea and sweets and then went out to look around before dinner.

(The gassho-zukuri are famous for their irori (built-in hearth). Part of our dinner was cooked over the fire)

We walked all the way up to the lookout point at the top of a small mountain/hill. We might have entered an area that was closed and roped-off....but sneaking in was worth it...check out those views. You could see the entire village surrounded by rice fields and mountains.




Dinner was amazing. Of course it included my not-so-favourite mountain veggies but everything else was divine. The river fish cooked in the irori was amazing and this area is known for great beef. We were all stuffed by the end of the meal and after baths we rolled into our futons.

The next morning we got up early (due to the very loud, old men in the room beside us), had a great breakfast in front of the hearth and then wandered a bit more around the village. We caught an earlier bus back to Takayama and then a train to Gero, a famous onsen town.

(If you look closely, you can see some old men bathing in the very outside bath...right next to the people playing cricket...uncomfortable)

Elz and I had been to Gero almost a year and a half before and had really enjoyed the foot onsens. As Justine wasn't so interested in a traditional onsen, we thought this would be a good way to experience the relaxing hot springs without getting completely naked. 
We picked up some ramune, a famous summer pop in Japan. The bottle is half the fun. You jam a piece of plastic into the lid and a glass marble shoots down into the liquid. It rolls around in the middle of the bottle and you can spend forever trying to figure out how they make the bottle. Just imagine...it used to be made entirely from glass.

(Corn flakes, soft ice cream and an onsen tamago. Brilliant)

One foot onsen is located inside a store. There, you sit soaking  your feet while watching a tv which plays a constant series of commercials/interviews with celebrities who are eating an ice cream parfait containing an onsen tamago (an egg slowly cooked in the hot onsen water). When Elspeth and I had been here before we had wanted to try it, but it had been 10AM and neither of us were hungry after our ryokan breakfast. This time we had no excuse. And it turned out to be REALLY GOOD.

(The water in this one was a bit hot....)

We walked around the town soaking our feet in the different foot onsens and looking for stamps (there was some stamp rally thing...we ended up finding them all but didn't want to give up our cards to enter some contest...). It was a relaxing afternoon.
Later we caught a train back to Nagoya station where we ate misokatsu (fried pork with a miso sauce, a Nagoya specialty) and of course, took some purikura!

Thanks for coming to Japan, Justine! I had a blast travelling with you!