I ate tongue. Now, it doesn't exactly taste like anything, it's just a rather tough meat. Not necessarily stringy, but rather, solid. But not as solid as the "soft bone" people have tried to feed me. Soft bone is cartilage. Tongue takes effort to chew and it feels weird. I plan to not eat it again if I can avoid it.
Restaurants in Japan are also a different experience. Usually, unless they are specifically trying to be "American" or "Italian" or the like, food is shared. Somewhat like an Izakaya, but without the bar atmosphere. Also, since the places I've been have been called yakitori places, they specialize in meat. One place was chicken, the other (where there was tongue) was beef. This is not to say they only have chicken or beef, but rather most of their menu consists of chicken or beef. Sometimes there's some pork.
The chicken place I went to was different then the beef place. The beef place had a grill in the middle of the table, and customers cooked their own meat.
With proper ventilation even
This is a small one actually. Some places might have the grill as part of the actual table.
Then you order what you'd like and it comes out prepped in small portions. Really, it only takes a couple of minutes to grill the meat because the portions are practically bite sized. As you order, it comes out bit by bit. Also, you can order as much as you like as you want it. So an hour after arriving you could still order food.
I had just gone there with my host family and the four of us spent over $130. Because meat is still expense, especially beef.
American restaurants have the classic 'order what you want and this is your food and only your food' thing.
The moon viewing party at Daikaku-ji. The temple belongs to Shingon Buddhists, but was originally built about 1200 years ago by Emperor Saga, around the time Kyoto fully became the (then) new capital. It became a temple for Buddhism because the head priest was Emperor Saga's grandson.
The tower in the picture is Shingyoho Tower, and was built in 1967 to commemorate the 1150th anniversary of the Heart sutra transcription by Emperor Saga. Either way it makes for some nice pictures when illuminated at night and across from a (man made) pond. There was the option to buy a ticket and take a boat out onto the pond to view the moon (or not because of the clouds), but by the time I had gotten there, there were no open tickets. So this was taken on a land bridge between a tiny pond and the actual one where people were on boats.
To make it seem more like a festival, there were stalls to buy souvenirs, and stalls to buy food. Okay all of them sold food, but some of the food was specifially to be souvenirs. Why? There's this idea in Japan that whenever someone travels, they buy things to bring back, and then give to everyone else. If someone knows that you're traveling to say, Tokyo, you buy them a snack or a little trinket and give to them. Different from the idea of buying souvenirs for ourselves.
Most of the temple itself was also open to the public. Every shrine or temple has a section that's not for tourists, as these places are not just tourist attractions. Buddhist and Shinto priests still practice at these places. (Shinto isn't exactly a religion, it's rather open in that there's no official text like a bible or quran, and there's no specific or strict way to pray.) But, because of the age of the temple, it uses an other intruder defense mechanism: nightingale floors. Each step causes the wooden floors to creak and squeak in a way that sounds similar to chirping birds. It was developed to prevent intruders from sneaking around. And it does seem to work well, even when I try to avoid making noise there's still a little bit of chirping under my feet.
I had a lack of pictures because I had gotten there with my friends just before dusk, perfect timing to not spend all day waiting for it to get dark, and not yet late enough where we couldn't get at least some pictures.
じゃあ、またね