Trips

Sun., 10/30 - Kyoto

This morning we rode the JR Inari-Nara train two stops to Inari to revisit the Fushimi Inari Shrine with the 1,000 Shinto torii gates. It was a sunny day which made all the orange (vermillion, actually) gates and the shrines very pretty.

Monument to the Kyoto electric railway	Torii gates
Fox holding a rice ear	Fox with the key
Traditional dress
	Omokaru-ishi
Omokaru-ishi	Ascending the path through the 1,000 torii gates take you to an area of small shrines made by individuals.
Kumataka Shrine
	Fox with key
	Another toilet sign - there must be a problem
After the train ride back to Kyoto station, the group crossed the street to the Kyoto Tower building. On the second floor is the Daiki Suisan studio where lessons in making sushi are given. We each made three sushi items as part of our lunch: tuna fish, egg, and shrimp sushi. Each plate also had raw tuna, salmon, eel, yellowtail, and squid sitting on balls of rice. The instructor chef then made egg, squash, and cucumber rolls wrapped in seaweed for three of us to eat instead of fish. They were fun to make. The chef then told us why he became a chef at age 16. As an apprentice he cleaned the floors and washed dishes for a year, then made sushi rolls (300 a day) for three years and was not allowed to cut fish until year 5 and then became a real chef in year 6. Women once were not permitted to be sushi chefs because “their hands are warmer than men’s” and “they apply cosmetics with their hands to their faces.” This is no longer an issue and women become chefs if they want to go through the apprenticeship.	Cuts of fish for making sushi
Chef Takeshita showing us how to begin	Putting ingredients on seaweed outer shell
Rolling it up	Cutting the roll into individual pieces of sushi
Three varieties	Our lunch
Farewell dinner	Some nice spider webs at the entrance to the hotel

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