Day 5 Kyoto

Today we caught the train to Kyoto, and then walked to the Toji Temple, which holds a market on the 21st of the month.  On the way, we bumped into three ladies studying English at a local college as a hobby, and chatted with them, exchanging cultural insights.

The market is vast and varied and has everything from fortune tellers to food stalls,

 plant stalls

 

 to clothing stores,

antiques to hand made articles, fabrics to ceramics.  It is the place to go if you love food, arts and crafts,

 

exploring a different culture, gardening and more.  What is lovely about it is that the locals adore the place as much as the tourists do.  And, it continues operating as a centre for worship in the midst of the madness and mayhem.

  I spent a lot of time getting ideas for my art work and buying souvenirs, stopping now and then for a delicious snack from one of the food stalls, and people watching.  My friend enthused about the clothes, bought souvenirs, raved at the plant stalls and  fell in love with the pottery.

We next took the side streets to the local shopping mall.  While enjoying green tea and a local parfait dessert, we suddenly felt dizzy and disorientated.  After a few seconds, we suddenly realised that the room was swaying and that we were experiencing a 6.2 earthquake, luckily centred quite far away in Tottori.  It was interesting watching the reactions of the locals.  The older women looked worried and focussed on the hanging ceiling lights, then got up and left.  The younger ones dived under the table.  Most just looked stunned and stayed where they were.  My phone registered an emergency.  The waitresses came round and checked we were all ok afterwards.  I have installed an app on my phone, Omotenashi Guide, which translates any future warnings into English.  There had been a siren and an announcement earlier, but we just assumed it was a practice fire drill.  Now we will know.

We then tried to find the handicraft store in the basement of the Kyoto tower, Yodhikawa, but it turned out the floor was under repair and the store no longer existed, so we headed over to the Sacra building, to check out the yarn in Avril.  It turned out that they had closed down, but instead, downstairs,  we discovered the magnificent Doll Studio Tomo ( Koubou Tomo), which has an amazing collection of exquisite Japanese child dolls, dressed in antique, one-off kimonos. Upstairs, we discovered Wisteria, a very good wool and craft shop, and Idola- a shop split into two rooms, selling, beads, buttons, fancy pins, trims, etcetera.

Wandering into the street, we strolled along until we found ourselves back in the arcade area.  We checked out a few shops, then visited another Namura Tailor House.  It turns out these fabric and craft shops each have slightly different contents, so my friend was forced to buy more fabric.  I think she needs to catch a boat rather than a plane home!