KYOTO to TOKYO

Dinner with The Actress went like this:

Miss Ai: "Hello! Are we ready to start our lesson today?"
Actress: "Wanna go to Kyoto?"

When you teach The Actress, you cancel whatever she wants to cancel. My first time to visit the ancient city. No time to prepare, just she and I and Nozomi. Talk about spontaneity ; if I didn't know any better I'd think she was an Aries!

So off we went getting on the Nozomi Shinkansen headed southbound at 3:30pm, arriving as the sun was setting in Shijo Kawaramachi in the downtown area of the former Capitol. Just like I've seen in the guide books, the JR commercials advertising Kyoto in the fall, and my limited imaginations, there were little doors lined up along tiny alley streets, twisting ever so slightly and every once in a while branching off into its own even more narrow alley. So many people walking! Somehow there were two lanes and enough room to walk both ways without feeling crowded. The Actress was a VIP at one shabu shabu restaurant (of course) where absolutely perfectly-marbled, melt-in-your-mouth wagyu were generously sliced and spread out before us on a large plate. I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Let me tell, however, of their goma-dare (sesame sauce, used for dipping).

I am definitely a goma-dare person, as opposed to a ponzu (the juice of yuzu or a similar Japanese citron blended with soy sauce and dashi) person, though I do like the option of both (which you have at any shabu shabu place). This Kyoto restaurant's goma-dare would more appropriately be described as sesame butter. They had just ground it into a paste, fresh I mean, and spooned a serving of it into a dipping dish, then poured in just the right amount of rice vinegar, soy sauce, and chili oil with red pepper flakes. I HEART chili oil (ra-yu) in my goma-dare. This was the best goma-dare I have ever had and from now when I make my own shabu shabu at home, I will be buying the goma as paste and not as a pre-bottled sauce. You should too, and add a bit of chili oil in there. The vinegar gave it a fabulous kick, too, note to self.

Afterwards we went to a bar down the street where she was also a VIP, and then it was time for me to go back to Tokyo to for a recording session (having your own studio comes in handy here). Yes, peeps, it was all in a matter of 3.5 hours that I was there. And no photo, why? I only had my cell phone cam with me, for which The Actress had given me a lovely keitai cell-phone strap for Christmas last year. Exactly 2 days after I had received the gift, my lovely canine son #1--who apparently suffers from a life-long deficiency for all things silver, magnetic, or similarly metal-like--had bitten the chain off of it. So that means, yes peeps, I have been hiding my phone from her sight for approximately 8 months now, to shield her from the absence of the keitai strap. But, anyway, I did not know I was going to Kyoto or I would have brought my digital camera and not have relied on my phone-cam. Or bought the same keitai strap.

So please imagine... in the colorful streets of downtown Kyoto... the river gently flowing nearby... young adults on dates and ojiichans and obaachans getting ready to open their shops... the anticipation and possibility of seeing a maiko or geisha sashaying by... While all of this was taking place, Miss Ai was dining on marbled beef and sake. Well you probably didn't want a photo of that anyway, didya now...