5th Japan Trip 2007 - #7

19th Dec 07 - Wif our heavy luggage, saying goodbye to Osaka, we went to Kyoto by train. It had been my dream to stay in Kyoto for 2 days to enjoy the sceneries and good food(of coz). Spoke to XM in Oct bot it and shes excited too. We picked APA hotel,5mins walk from city center. (4000 yen Night/pax wif breakfast). We reached ard 1pm, the check in time is 3pm. But we were too tired, so we decide to pay 2000yen extra to check in early and take a break. Thank goodness BS2 channel was showing Taka show, we two glued to the TV again. Haha..
Its around 4pm and stomach calling for food. We did not had lunch. I was watching a recorded TV program with Ryosuke san when I saw them introducing this restaurant Yamatomi.
They will give you Raw materials to let u dipped into Tempura paste and deep fried it urself. I find it so interesting that I told XM tt I wanted to try. Since theres veggies too, shes excited too! Im not familiar with this area(though been to Kyoto twice..) we asked the tourist info counter first. Took a bus and walked into a small lane. But theres many restaurant in this lane. I guessed coz they r jus right beside the famous Kamogawa.
It took us quite sometime before locating the shop, coz its quite deep inside the lane. We were a bit scared at first coz the lane is quite dark besides the lights from the various restaurants. But after stepping in, all concerns disappeared!

They brought us to level 2 and gave us a table thats right beside the window.
We could see Kamogawa clearly from here.
Its beautiful with the night fall. XM say its romantic but too bad we r two ladies. Haha!!!

As 2nd level is Tatami seating, we were to take off our shoes before stepping onto the Tatami.
They placed our shoes into the shoe cupboard and gave us the tag(which XM holding) to "redeem" our shoes back later.

I started to order the food. Minimum 2 sticks per order. So we ordered, sweet potato, green bell pepper, mushroom, tomatoes, lotus root, asparagus, potato, ebi and pork. With 2 rice. Me hor, thought they let us fried ourselves. But when they came with already fried I nearly fainted!!! Read the menu again then I realised, oops.. Only if I ordered the set meal then we can fried it ourselves, else they fried! Hai yo!!
XM very nice, said its ok. Maybe if we fried it ourselves, we might not be able to fry it so nicely, golden color. Ok la... Tts true too.. hahaha I said, maybe its god will that if we did it ourselves sometig bad may happen, hes protecting us.
The food really good and very very fresh n sweet! But I tik we over ordered! The bill was 3000yen in total. Very very worth it!!
The staffs thought we were from Hongkong, but when we said from Singapore, they were very surprised coz they didnt expect us to be able to find this place. :D
After dinner, we went shopping again. :p We bought more clothes and the bright bright "stones" to deco our handphones. Coz I saw what some Aran's fan did, I thought it was very pretty. Though Im not good with my Art, but I tried.
And tata, heres my finishing product!!! I was abit concerned worrying that the small stones will drop. So I bought some extra small ones to patch it in case any dropped. Front is "ARAN", and at the back theres a dangling "K" represent "Aran Kei" 's K. So reading from front to back is Aran K(ei) hahahaha!! and the rest are Stars to represent Hoshi gumi(star troop). Clever hor??! HAHHA!!!