23 November 2016
After a late lunch following a morning of autumn leaves viewing at the temples along the Philosopher’s Path in Kyoto’s Northern Higashiyama area, we took a short subway ride from the Keage Station and alighted at the Kyoto Shiyakusho-mae Station at about 3.40 PM. Our PASMO prepaid smart card that we bought a few years ago in Tokyo could be used on the Kyoto subway.
The station is linked to an underground mall. Walking westwards, we left the mall at the start of Teramachi-Dori. Teramachi and Shinkyogoku shopping arcades are two parallel running, covered pedestrian streets, packed with shops and restaurants that sell day-to-day clothes and goods.
Walking southwards along Teramachi, we came to a junction where there was the famous restaurant called Kani Doraku. This restaurant originated from Osaka’s Dotonburi Street and there is no mistaking what this restaurant is good at. A giant mechanised red crab with waving claws and legs were beckoning visitors outside. We would be visiting Osaka later in our itinerary so we gave it a miss for now.
Some of the things to buy in Japan are the local beauty and medicinal products. We have previously visited the Matsumoto Kiyoshi store and this is a good store to get these items. The store offers tax free shopping for foreigners if the total purchases are above 5000 Yen and the goods are to be used outside of the country.
We just need to show our passports to the check-out counter staff and the value-added tax of 8% will be deducted at the shop. The receipts and forms were stapled to the passports and we were to hand this to the customs officer at the airport when we leave. The staff will packed and sealed the items in transparent plastic bags that we were supposed to show to the custom officers but there was no inspections done at the airport.
We actually packed all this items in our checked in luggage when we leave Japan. The customer officers were just collecting the receipts and forms. No need to see the goods, based on a trust and honour system that the products would be taken out of the country. I think this is a good system that eliminated the “penny-wise pound-foolish” process used in many other countries. What could be simpler than that? No need to go through complicated processes and long queues at the airport to claim back the money.
Nishiki Market, a busy, crowded and narrow food market street runs off in a perpendicular direction off the Teramachi-dori right where the Tenman-gū Shrine is located. This was our second time at the Nishiki Market and it was crowded as ever.
We took our time to browse through the stores. Many local and fresh produce were being sold and would greatly interest those who likes to cook. Many of the dried seafood products like dried scallops, cuttlefishes, fish and laver looked interesting.
There were also a few good restaurants in the vicinity. For ramen, there was the Ippudo, Ichiran (we tried this previously – see here), Kyoto Gogyo and Ramen Sen No Kaze. There was also a Tonkatsu (Fried Breaded Pork Cutlet) restaurant at the western end of Nishiki Market called the Katsukura Shijo Higashinotoin, This restaurant is a branch of the same restaurant located at the Kyoto Station. See post of our visit to the Katsukura located at the Kyoto Station here. Since Katsukura serves one of the best tonkatsu in Japan, it was a simple decision to try this restaurant again.
We were early for dinner and the restaurant was not crowded.
We had to make our own dipping sauce for the pork cutlets. Clear instructions were provided at the table. First grind the roasted sesame seeds into a powder. Then add the sauce of our choice – Katsukura Original or Spicy.
Tonkatsu (Fried Breaded Pork Cutlet) dinner at the Katsukura Shijo Higashinotoin. The meal came with miso soup and free flow of steamed rice.
Once again, Katsukura lived up to its reputation and did not disappoint.
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