Kyoto - 豆水楼

If there is one thing I learned from my goings to Japan, it is the care for little details, that in the end, makes all the difference between something that looks awesome and something that looks cheap. Some people believe that food, for example, needs to be so tasty that the shape, size and way of presenting it should not matter. I beg to differ. I think the more effort put in little details, especially in details that can be viewed as superfluous and a waste of effort, the more merit the person has, the more earnest the person seems to be about what he is doing. Things like, why do my bed in the morning if I am going to undo it in the afternoon... well it does make a room look nicer - note here that at this very moment my room is pretty messy... Everything in the small detail. A guy told me once, "I think girls who take care of their feet well are amazing: if they care up to the feet, then imagine what time they spend on the rest!" ... lol, so many aspect of life we never thought about... ha ha

Anyways, in Japan, traditional food is always prepared in small quantities, brought up set by set - from 1 to 3 small dish at a time usually - and prepared with a lot of care. I realized  in Japan the having something the tasted awesome, but that was also awesome-looking had quite a charm. It is rare, in fact, that I had weird tasting stuff in the food that was presented to me in Japan. 

Tousuirou

When we got to Montreal to take our first plane, my brother and I bought a lonely planet of Japan, as well as the Lonely planet app for Kyoto and Tokyo. I highly recommend both because they are really well made and unlike the Guide Michelin that assumes you have a car, Lonely Planet has many different kind of suggestions, from backpacking ideas to let's-travel-like-a-big-shot ones. Also, for the iPhone app of lonely planet, it is great as it has a up-to-date GPS integrated that does not take up Internet plan: it situates you through space satelites. How cool is that. So travelling in bicycle in Kyoto without getting lost is actually possible, even without paying loads of money. In the map they also situated the places that they believe are worth visiting - of all the place we tried in the book, all of them were worth it so why not give it a try. 

So we got to Tousuirou through the recommendation of Lonely Planet - Kyoto, and were quite happy with what we got.

People were nice, wearing traditional outfits - must be uncomfortable for long working hours IMO, but very pretty. We sat along the counter - people should always sit at counters when traveling. I see no point in getting your own little spot in a restaurant unless you are very tired and want to relax, and the place you choose to sit at is beside a nice waterfall or something. I mean, how can you know what is worth it if you don't interract with the people who actually live where you are at. They should know their shit. 

Neither my brother nor I have a big appetite, so we usually just eat a lot of time during the day, small quantities. I think that was ever our biggest problem in Japan. Japanese people eat really a lot during meals and as you order a set in restaurant, the parts usually come one by one, so that you don't know when it actually finishes, so you don't know what to do when it comes to "eat a bit less to keep place for the next ones... I mean, how many next ones?". For instance, while we had tons of small plates coming through, there was this big pot with tofu in it, that we should technically have all eaten, and gotten two refill of... needless to say we did not finish the first one.

The only way to know when the meal is about to be over, really, is when the rice comes. There is ALWAYS rice in Japanese traditional food, and it always comes last, as if everything else was to adornate the rice, that is actually the proper meal. In this case we actually had soy milk ice cream coming after, but yah, that was still the end of the meal. See how there is almost no rice? I asked them to give us only a little as we were insanely full, and it is quite impolite to leave food in the plate. We gained weight in Japan, eating so much afraid to be impolite.