Sunday Café Expedition VII

www.sarasan2.exblog.jp 
Ginger ale with mango syrup 550¥
Caramel cheese cake 470¥

Sarasa Nishijin. For me this place isn't a new discovery, but still on top of my lists. The place used to be a public bath house, but it has been renovated to serve as a café. The original tiling and other elements left from the previous purpose makes the atmosphere really strong and interesting. Their cake and drink selection is quite wide (and good!) and the prices aren't that high. Perfct combination of interesting surroundings, delicious cakes and good atmosphere.

This place goes well with the Funaoka bath house near by. This Sunday we walked more than 13km at Kurama and Kibune and after that nothing felt more relaxing than good bath and café.  

Trip to Taiwan part 3

The story continues...

After visiting Jiu Fen we still had one more day to stroll around Taipei before going to Hsinchu for a light festival. We bought some coffee and something to eat and went to the Peace park just to see the pavillions. After that (and many pictures) we went to the botanical garden and from there we contined to the famous ball shape shopping center Core Pasific City. Then we has dinner with Ed's friends.

In Hsinchu we also had nice hotel, even though the name "The golden swallow" made us first a bit uncomfortable :) The light festival was really nice thousands of lanterns and food stands and fireworks and everything.

On the next morning we just did a bit of souvenir shopping and then went back to the airport and home. It is funny that home means Japan.

The whole trip was super great and really felt like discovering a new culture and places.

Trip to Taiwan part 1

Busy days... My parents have arrived to Kyoto (a day before I arrived from Taiwan) and with them I'm running from one temple to a shire and so on :) It is great to have them here!

But to the trip:

I, Dan and Ed went to Taiwan for 5 nights since we (read Dan) found cheap flights there (~65€ round trip). The plan was just to look around in Taipei for few days and then visit some other place and spent one night there. We actually didn't do so much research before the trip but wanted to see the temples and try all different types of junk food in the night markets. 

The gate to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall

Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall

Details of lnterns and ceiling.

Beautiful Chinese style bridge in the park around the memorial hall.

Around the park.

We had a nice hotel in Ximan, great area with good mood.

Details of the white & hue mint style

Taiwanese lunch, gooood.

Downstairs of a ice cream shop

Street styles. In Taipei one can see a lot of red used in buildings and arroundings.

Taipei 101, the building that used to be the highest in the world.

Fashion shoot in the middle of empt night street.

Food at the night markets: You can find fried anything, Taiwans famous stinky tofy and huge huge ice creams.

Ice cream with grated nuts.

I have so so many pictures so I'll post the rest soon.

Study trip

Yesterday we started our trip early in the morning by taking a train up north to the mountains, where the snow is.

Some of us spent the one and a half hour train trip by sleeping, some facebooking and some by takin photos.

Well actually we went first to see a museum of a company called Gunze, But since I was alrady so hungry I jumped straight to the food pictures. Our lunch boxes were very nice. A bit fishy but good!

After that we continued to a building that used to be a primery school, but nowdays it is used for making washi, japanese paper. We all made some sheets of paper and had a tour around the building showing the proces of making paper step by step.

In the other rooms of the school there were exhibitions about papers and also few cool parasols.

The next stop was our hotel. After settling down we headed outdoors to play in the snow. Some of the other students weren't so familiar with snow so we had to teach them how it work (in the other words wash their faces with snow while stuffing it into the necklanes). In the hotel there were also a hotspring aka onsen. Being all wet and frozen after the snow fight it was a great pleasure to soak in the outdoor pool. After that we had a big nabe dinner with everyone. 

On the next morning we contined to a building that used to be a temple 200 years ago. There we were teached how to make a straw thingy (in the picture but the name was too difficult to remember haha).

This item is for protection and for good harvest aka happines. 

After we had a big lunch with fire baked rice and miso soup, eggrolls and deer meat.

The last part of the trip was to visit a village that is famous for its special style of houses with big hight roofs. Unfortunately from those i don't have that good pictures because the tirednes was a bit too much :)

But over all it was such a great trip with such a great people. Of course we were following the Japanese tight timetable and we could have had more "free time" (but if we needed it we took it). And actually it was great to see some snow! It felt so cosy and familiar to see all that whiteness. There is no winter without snow.