Kyoto Shopping District

In the late afternoon, we took the subway over to Shijo-dori, and walked around the shopping district. We started with the Nishiki market. It's an alley that spans about 5 city blocks and is filled with food and kitchen stalls/stores. They sold anything you can imagine including fresh produce, fish, tea, and Japanese spices. All of it looked delicious, and I could spend an entire day there. Supposedly, all of the kaiseki chefs do their shopping here, and I believe it after walking through this market. Prior to this trip, I thought I had fluency in Japanese food. I no longer believe that is the case after being introduced to so many new things. Japanese food is an art form, and the Japanese are always creating new things, so one can never know everything. One food stall that caught my eye was a korokke stall, and it was no ordinary stall. They sold standard types of korokke, but they also sold a chocolate korokke and a yakisoba korokke. I wanted both, but I figured I only had enough room for a chocolate korokke. I never thought of the concept to deep frying chocolate let along deep frying chocolate with panko. It only cost 90 yen, and it was very interesting. It had the nice crunch of a savory korokke, but it oozed with chocolatey goodness. Alexis just thought it was weird, but I thought it was nice little tasty sweet treat.

Once we reached the end of Nishiki market, we were surrounded by stores in an enclosed outdoor mall. Alexis and I walked around, and did some shopping. This Kyoto shopping area is huge. It would put the malls in southern California or maybe even the Mall of America to shame. We walked around for a few hours looking at different shops. The goods started to look the same after a while, but we kept looking around. Unlike most US malls, the malls contained a number of shrines. As we walked through the mall, we would walk from store to store, and every once in a while we would come across a shrine in the space where one would typically find a store. It was odd, but it gave the shopping area some character. We began to get tired, so we headed back to Kyoto Station to eat dinner.