Day 5, June 28

Today has been a bit of a sight seeing day. Tess found a Vegan restaurant for breakfast which was actually very nice. First time I have had a salad for breakfast and first time I have eaten a salad with chopsticks! Tess and Tara had pancakes and Gerard had a vegan cheese risotto which tasted really good and even a bit breakfasty.

Then it was off to find a market. A lot of the food over here is really unusual and we had no idea what most of it was at the market. Also everything is in plastic packaging.

For lunch Tess and Tara went to a vegetarian restaurant while Gerard and I went to a restaurant next door which specialised in Tonkatsu – a Japanese dish of deep fried pork cutlet served with cabbage and freshly ground sesame seeds (that we ground ourselves.

After lunch we took a train to the Fushimi Imari-Trisha Shinto Shrine. There are 10,000 torii gates here – quite impressive!

Tess, Tara and I went off to a vegan ramen and Gyoza cooking course for dinner.

The writing on the Torii gates is from Companies that have paid for the gate, kind of like a sponsorship, they believe it will bring them luck and good fortune for their business. There are no more vacancies for business to sponsor Torii gates. If the gates get old and need replacing the businesses usually replace them rather than give up their spot.

This was at the shrine. Apparently if you guess the weight of the rock then lift it, if it is lighter than you think your wish will come true!