Visitors, Entokuin Temple, Taste Bud Assault, Illuminated Crab

I learned a very valuable lesson over the last week or so. What may seem like an immunity to the impact of consuming copious amounts of alcohol is no guarantee that you will actually feel ok the next day, or the day after that, even if you weren’t intoxicated.

Especially if you’re out until 5am with friends who are visiting Kyoto and you decide that the best course of action is to show them no less than six bars in one evening. That number could’ve been seven had the bartender not been asleep on the bar at one of the bars we visited at 3am.

In short, Tuesday and Wednesday of last week I felt like toasted shit. There’s every chance I contracted some variety of cold also because the average temperature in Kyoto had a sharper, faster decline than Hootie & the Blowfish.

Winter is coming.

Autumn was barely a smudge on the meteorologist’s calendar.

Now I don’t even need to be excited in order for my nipples to be erect, nature is doing the heavy lifting on that part. But now it’s very difficult to determine when I am excited. One thing I won’t do is walk up to strangers and ask them to go the grope on my nips to confirm whether my nipples are in fact ‘excited’ or ‘cold’, which is actually more of a catch-22 because I may get excited by a person who chooses to partake in said experiment, thus leading to further nipple arousal.

Anyhow. It was fun seeing these two friends and showing them the Kyoto Greg and I know.

Another evening I trekked over to Entokuin Temple. During ‘Autumn’ (because seriously, it is freakin’ cold these days) Kyoto becomes a very pretty city to live in.

Some of the temples do ‘light up’ events to showcase what their gardens look like at night. Here’s some happy-yet-chilled-snaps from Entokuin.

 

That’s the zen garden lit up at night. The temple itself is quite nice to walk through too, with many intricately-painted artworks that you cannot take photos in. Because that’s how some temples roll here, folks. They’re sassy like that.

Here’s the larger garden near the exit of the temple. These pictures don’t really capture what it is really like, unfortunately. I swear, investing in an actual camera is on my to-do list.

And here’s another shot of the same garden, which is actually quite large. I sat there for about 10 minutes and tried really hard to think about deep, reflective, soul-searching emotive kind of stuff, but decided that relaxing and trying to think of ways to keep warm was far more important.

And here are some panorama shots I took of each of the gardens. Click on these to open them in a new window for the full effect, otherwise they just look like squashed failures. I mean, they still look like squashed failures as they currently exist below.

 

I have a history with putting weird things in my mouth in Japan. That is not a euphemism. The list, as it stands, is as follows… Tebasaki Ice-cream, Takoyaki Lemonade, Pepsi-flavoured Chips, Kimchi Lemonade, Flaming Ramen and many more. The most recent addition to the assault on my tastebuds is this…

Months ago, I had a Gari Gari Kun Highball (ice block mixed with whisky and soda) which was delicious and a smart combination for summer. Because winter is upon us, it seems only natural to have a seasonal release for winter, right?

Wrong. So much wrong.

That picture there, my friends, is a stew flavoured ice-cream. Take all the things you love about stew – potatos, carrots, a hearty broth and then freeze it into a consumable block of ice and serve it to people. Yes, there were even little bits of frozen potato in there… Yum! Japan’s knack for sampling different flavours or varieties is a testament to the phrase, “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”.

And to close out this entry, I’ll deliver on the final element of the title of this post.