i made it through the night and managed to even make friends with my room-mate. she had offered me gifts of sweets and writing paper, and so i offered her breakfast back in return. i’d gone out the night before to find something to eat for breakfast, and ended up with cheese slices, crazy bread slices, and coffee bags. and so we ate cheese on toast togehter, speaking very rearely because of respective poor language skills.

this is my coffee bag filter through into the cup, and the cheese on toast is in the background.

i finally made it out for the guesthouse just in time for the 12noon lockout (so many rules in that place!) and started to make my way up to the cooking class i’d booked into. before the cooking class i tried to find a temple market that only opened on the 21st day of each moneth. after lots of walking and trying to communicate i finally got there, and had a look around and ate some snacks!

this is a pie filled with custard, cooked fresh in the hot iron:

on my way there i found this beautiful rainbow – it was there just for a few minutes and i caught it just as i went hunting for coffee (the coffee shop i found wouldn’t do takeaway though, so all i got in the end was the rainbow, which i was happy with).

i found 5 other westerners at the bus stop we were told to meet at and then our host – taro – and all 6 of us walked to his home. inside his small home there was a kitchen, an open plan living/dining are, a bathroom and then 2 upstairs tatami rooms that we saw at the end of the class. the 6 of us, with taro and his wife yoshiko spent the afternoon learning how to cook:

• dashi stock
• miso soup with vegetables
• tamago (egg omelette)
• go-mae (spinach with sesame seed paste)
• simmered eggplant
• agedashi tofu
• (the others learnt to make chicken meatballs or kobe beef)

after the 4 or 5 hours in the kitchen we sat down and ate together around the table.

we parted ways at the bus stop, and the english guy in the class and i headed to our same bus to head back into the gion area. i invited him to joing me on my attempt to find a temple that had been advertised as being open at night, with night lighting.

we walked and walked and then finally came upon it:

we walked around in awe of the night lighting, and i found another set of little jizos, strangely not lit up by the colourful lights. but i stopped and looked,  and explained to edward my understanding of them, and then why i was interested in them. the second person i’d told about the miscarriage on the trip, and in a different context, with little expectation of response. and there was little, but it was still a good moment.