Uji is a small town on the banks of the Uji river about 30min by train n the Nara line from Kyoto. It is known as the Green tea capital and is famous for green tea, green tea desserts and the Byodo-in Temple, which is on the reverse side of the 10 yen coin. Being the green tea lovers they are, the two girls requested that we visit the place while we were at Kyoto.
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| Tonkichi |
Having reached at 1030am, we headed straight to a famous green tea dessert shop called Tonkichi. They only open at 11am and we decide to take a walk to the river side and see if there were any restaurants open for lunch. It turns out that the shops and restaurants here mostly open at 11am, some at 12pm. After half an hour's walk we end up at Tonkichi's riverside branch which just opened it's doors.
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| Matcha cake and ice-cream |
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| Cha-soba and pickled mackerel |
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| Ocha and Matcha "nougat" |
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The pictures speak for themselves. And the verdict is... Best dessert i have ever had. The ice-cream was soft and creamy. The cake was not too sweet and had just the slightest taste of matcha. The "nougat" was a something between a soft nougat and marshmallow. The Cha-soba was perfect, not too chewy.
What do we shop for in Uji? Green tea of course!
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| Pathway to the restaurant |
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| Garden within the compound |
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| Eating area |
After shopping, our craving for the matcha desserts returned and since we were not coming back, we decided to visit the main branch of tonkichi. I'm very impressed with Tonkichi restaurants as the eating area is just a small portion of the establishment. The rest of it are gardens and pathways. They could easily do renovations to triple the seating size but chose not to so as to maintain the serenity of the environment.
Just looking at these pictures make me want to go back to Uji. Since it's Jamie's favorite place of our entire trip, we just may.
Phew! A typhoon struck today just after we came back by Shinkansen from Kyoto. All subway trains were delayed till after the typhoon though. Thank goodness we met a nice Japanese lady who wrote chinese characters to explain what was happening to us an then brought us to another underground line to go back to Namba where coincidentally she worked at.
We even managed to reach Shinsaibashi before the stores closed to do a bit of shopping.
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| Takoyaki |
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| Kushikatsu |
As per normal, we had dinner / supper at Dotonbori. First we sampled one of Dotonbori's 6 or 7 Takoyaki stands and then had some Kushikatsu which is an Osakan speciality.
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