happy happy

ahhh... The joys of a family christmas... Too much food, too many presents, lots of sleep and drink and books and friends. What could be better? Well, being with the rest of our family, of course, but that will have to happen later this year, in bits and pieces.

And before christmas, we went to Kyoto with our friend Michiko. We stayed in her daughter's 10-mat apartment (just the 3 of us, Michiko stayed in her son's smaller apartment downstairs). What, some of you may ask, is a mat? Rooms in Japan are measured in Tatami mats, which are about the size of me, I think. Maybe a little shorter and wider (0k, about twice as wide), and 10 of those make a pretty good sized apartment - for Japan.

Kyoto was nice, but much more modern than I expected. I guess I had some unrealistic vision of ancient Japan - but it is a modern, functional city - with bits of old stuff stuck in. We went to lots of temples, running from cute little ones stuck in corners of shopping streets, to typical Japanese temples and shrines, to really stunning ones unlike anything else I've seen. Those were my favourites - the 1001 Bhudda temple, with - well - 1001 life-sized bhuddas lined up on 10 levels - each unique and beautiful. And the Golden Temple - photos of it everywhere, in every book about Japan, but in reality even MORE beautiful than I imagined.

And Kyoto was different from Tokyo in that every restaurant we went to had an English menu, and they brought it to us without us even asking for it! As if we were obviously not Japanese-speakers! Perceptive people, there. We had fantastic food, the best ramen I have ever had, and fantastic, huge and cheap (by any standards) Italian course meal. The Italian restaurant had a dessert bar - all you can eat for 500 yen (about cdn$6) if you also have a meal. You only get one go at it, but it is with a proper dinner-sized plate... I was impressed, no, flabbergasted by the amount of dessert a tiny little Japanese woman can fit on one plate and then EAT! 5 of them pretty much emptied the dessert bar - which had about 12 different desserts. One woman took 5 ramekins of creme brule, and that was just the start! We considered taking photos of them with their mountains of dessert, but decided it might be considered rude...

But I want to go back there and see how much I can pile on one plate!