Soba noodles, the Kyoto version of Grand Bazaar and Arashiyama — what a day

Hello all you lovely readers, if you exist.  Since no one has commented or emailed, we have no idea if anyone is reading this blog — surely you, our friends, are hanging on every word????

Yesterday started with soba noodle cooking class.  It’s HARD.  Laird was the star, since he’s a bread maker.  I think the only time I use flour is to make gravy or thicken stew.  {L note: we found out from Yoriko — on the Uji trip — that 100% buckwheat flour noodles are really hard to do. Our teacher yesterday let us use a 30% bread flour/70% buckwheat mix. It was very similar to activating the gluten by kneading for bread dough. But no yeast.} It was great fun, though, to try to get the ball of soba dough to be really, really smooth and then to roll it out to the thinnest possible square.  Learned a cool trick of folding edge of dough over the rolling pin and then pulling the dough.  After we finally got the dough as thin as thin is, like an i thin, we folded over and began cutting.  Wow, what a major knife we had to cut with!  We used a guide, but the trick is to cut straight down, then tilt the knife to move the guide back just the right amount to ensure all the noodles look the same.  Boy, did I fail that part!  I kept having to reset my guide, I think for each noodle.  I felt a little better that Laird’s weren’t so much better than mine.  {L again: the soba knife is key. We will try to buy one or two if we can find a store. It’s ground flat on one side and the taper on the other. In my mind, I can see a brace on the end of the knife so you can quickly replicate the angle. Once an engineer, always an engineer, I guess. } We then unfolded them and what had been short noodles became long noodles.  For lunch we had our cold soba noodles and tempura onion/carrot/parsley.  It was yummy, but I believe I prefer commercial noodles to my homemade ones.  Then we went to the great market, whose name we can’t remember and can’t find the right map to tell you.  Turns out, the taxi driver kept that map.  Laird says call it Nishkei until we find out otherwise.  Daniel, do you know?  It’s like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, only newer and cleaner.  It has everything you could possibly want, except perhaps a present for Theo who we know will not wear a yukata or eat strange food.  Still searching for you, my dear one.

We came back to the hotel and decided pretty late in the afternoon to go to Arashiyama.  Oh, my, it is what one thinks of Japan:  on the river, backdrop of mountains, many, many temples and bamboo forests.  And thousands of tourists.  We took a rickshaw ride and our guide, Ryo, was marvelous — very cute and VERY fit.  He spoke pretty good English, lived in Italy for several years, had been a professional skier.  What a beautiful, beautiful place Arashiyama is!  Beautiful traditional houses — and land, space, sky.  The first real scenery we’ve seen in a wide sky — like all big cities, Kyoto’s sky is hemmed in by buildings; Osaka’s by container ship gantries and buildings.  Also so lovely in amongst the bamboo, oxygen pouring into us.  We wanted to go to the Tenryuji temple, but there was not enough time, alas.  I wish we could skip the sake tour and go there this afternoon.  Town is famous for tofu because the water, the air are so pure.  Rightfully so, for dinner we had tofu and more tofu and teoke yuba.  OMG, it was so good!  I don’t mind tofu, but I’ve never raved about it before.  I cannot tell you how wonderful it was — and yuba, the skin skimmed off when making tofu, is amazingly good.  Not a fan so much of the custard with a piece of fish at the bottom.  Or the “dessert”, some weird gelatinous thing that feels like uni (sea urchin) in the mouth, or like tongue, only softer.  These are not textures I like.  That’s a yuck for me.  Laird liked it, thought it was the best thing on his tray.

There was an amazing, soul-thrilling exhibit in the train station called the Kimono Forest.  It was hundreds of light tubes scattered around the station with what might have been papers inside — all like kimono fabrics.  Sia, you would have been SO HAPPY to see it!  Talk about color and pattern!  Just walking among them made me want to stay there all night.  I wished for a sleeping bag and the absence of tourists.

We finally got a taxi for the ride back to hotel.  Some of them have automatic door openers on the back doors but the driver was a bit too ready to go and pushed the button too soon and tried to shut the door on my ankle.  When we got back to the hotel, it was quite swollen.  Luckily it went down overnight, but, boy, is my body over walking and standing and sitting.  I may or may not get to the sake factory today — it takes an hour to get there and I don’t even like sake.  Time to take some drugs.