Samurai Cooking Masters

Oct 17, 2011, Kyoto Japan We had a very funfilled day on our second day in Kyoto. We had 2 "excursions" booked. First we had a Samurai Kembu lesson, which is not actually martial arts like one might think... (my self included.) Samurai Kembu is actually the art of Samurai. It's poetry and dance that they recite to get into the zone before war. Usually it tells a story. There is an example of a Samurai practicing Samurai Kembu in the movie "The Last Samurai", although I'm not sure which actor, or even which part, that's just what we were told, so now we will have to watch it again and dance along! Our teacher was a master in Samurai Kembu, she was this little unimposing Japanese girl, quiet and sweet (as most Japanese people seem to be). But at the end she did a performance, and she got right into character and rocked the show.



 It was really cool to see a performance from a real Samurai Kembu master... She taught us a whole routine to a poem about one of the first and most famous Samurais. He wrote the poem before going to war, as many Samurais do.

 We tried to be graceful, but sheathing and unsheathing a sword takes way more coordination than you would think!



 And you have to make sure the sharp part of the sword is always in the right position for showing respect (blade towards you) or obviously if you are pretending to be in war the blade needs to be away from you. Lockey had a hard time resheathing his sword b/c he would accidentally turn the scabbard the wrong way and since the sword is curved you can only put it back in one way.... So when my scabbard accidentally turned the wrong way and I couldn't put it back in I said I pulled a Lockey... He's so cool he already has his own Samurai move!



Then we got to play and do a little photo shoot!

 So after our lesson (which we woke up nice and early for), we were off on another adventure. We went from the Kyoto train station and had a couple of hours to kill so just started walking. What a surprise. Anyways, we came upon the LARGEST wooden structure in the world! (I think it was called Goei-do) I had read about it before we came, but hadn't planned on seeing it, but we just stumbled across it. It was huge, and quite magnificent. Dark wood w/ Gold accents.

 We are pretty fortunate and when we travel we generally stumble on lots of neat things, this being one of them. So we took off our shoes and went on a little tour.

Side note.... the toilets in Japan are crazy, polar opposites of Beijing's holes in the ground. They have heated seats, and air vacuum deodorizers, fake flushing sound effects, and bidets w/ 2 different settings (front or back) and angle and pressure increase or decrease buttons.... going to the bathroom is always an adventure!

 Anyways, we shared a small lunch nearby and saw some women in kimonos wandering the mall.  It's interesting how normal it is for Japanese to wear their traditional clothing.  People would stare and wonder if we wandered around in pioneer clothing!



then we went back to the station and went up 15 floors of escalators (each about 3-4 floors long) to get to the roof top garden and see the views, the station was quite an amazing view in itself. The architecture was crazy! ( All of the airports and major train stations seem to be a really big deal in Asia)




 Then we met Chizuko.

Chizuko holding a sign w/ "Price" on it... How cool did we feel?

 She is a local who does cooking lessons in her home. She was an excellent teacher. She taught us to make sushi rolls, (which were a little time consuming, but easy enough to make), miso soup, a spinach sesame salad, tempura, and Japanese omelette (all or which we got to eat for dinner) and she told us how to make sunomono, and gave us a recipe for teriyaki chicken.

 She also let us try some persimmon, I had never tried persimmon and I am in love w/ this little fruit. It's orange, and looks like a tomato from the outside, but tastes like a mango/peach/melon. All of the food was absolutely delicious and Chizuko's company was great, she is also a tour guide so gave us some info on some of the history around Kyoto. It was a great experience.

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 The sun goes down quite early in Japan, around 5:15, so it always feels later than it is, and I am always exhausted by the end of the day, so we decided to walk back to our hotel, but on the way we found this really cool little complex w/ some neat boutiques and a big screen playing MTV music videos in a big courtyard w/ old-school looking street lights and a couple of little cafes, so we got a hot chocolate and a sour cream pumpkin tart. Oh how I love pumpkin, and during the autumn in Canada there is plenty of pumpkin and apple desserts to go around. This is not the case in Hong Kong though, so we were pleasantly surprised when we got to Japan to learn that there are pumpkin desserts everywhere! It tastes like Autumn.