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Kyoto- Part II: Fushimi Inari and a Cooking Class

By Cheryl
As noted in the previous post, Kyoto is the cultural capital of Japan.  It is much smaller than both Tokyo and Osaka and is considered a very walkable city. We've walked several kilometres daily in our time here, exploring new neighbourhoods and recommended sights.

Typical side street in Kyoto

Another side street

One of the popular sights in Kyoto is the Fushimi Inari Taisha (Shrine).  Fushimi Inari Shrine is a Shinto shrine famous for its vermillion torii gates.





Inari is the Shinto God of rice and foxes are thought to be its messengers- leading to many statues of foxes on the grounds as well.



There are thousands of torii (gates), each one donated by individuals or companies.  The oldest, and largest, one dates back to 1589.  These gates straddle a network of trails that head into the wooded forest of Mount Inari. 





There are other smaller shrines nestled among the trails and gates. 




Fushimi Inari is popular tourist attraction and there were large crowds near the beginning of the trail.  These crowds thinned drastically the further up the mountain we went.


After spending a lovely morning at Fushimi Inari, we made our way to our cooking class.  We love to cook and our hope is to try a class in as many countries as we can over the coming months.  We booked a class with Cooking Sun as it got good reviews for its intimate, hands-on learning environment.


We chose to cook Izakaya-style food- casual dining 'pub-style' fare.  We were joined by an American cookbook author and her husband.   The class was 3.5 hours long and we made 6 dishes and a dessert.  The kids wielded sharp knives, dealt with hot cooking oil and measured ingredients independently and were all smiles.  They had mixed reviews about the final products but continue to rave about how much fun they had 'cooking' the food regardless of the outcome.   Throughout the class, our instructors shared personal stories of Japanese culture, demonstrated various traditional cooking techniques and highlighted certain western and eastern influences.  This wonderful afternoon was a highlight for all of us!!



Meal #1: Chicken marinated in vinegar sauce, burdock and green bean salad and stir-fried pumpkin in miso sauce

Meal #2: Grilled eggplant with dashi, yakitori tsukune (grilled chicken meatball) and somen (japanese fried noodles)
Dessert: Matcha Kanten and ice cream
Mike sampled some sake with his meal
Tourism has grown exponentially in Japan over the last decade.  Our cooking instructor shared that 6 years ago Kyoto received ~7 million international tourists annually.  Last year this number was over 30 million.  Despite this, by staying in a residential neighbourhood, eating at small off-the-beaten track restaurants and taking public transit, we were able to immerse ourselves as much as possible.  Other than in the major tourist areas, we did not come across many other foreigners.

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