Today we went to Uji, a town near Kyoto known for its production of tea. We first stopped at the Agata shrine, one of the oldest of its style in Japan:
We bought a couple of matcha bowls from this gentleman:
He has a small but beautiful stock of tea ware. We bought a bowl from him during a previous visit, but didn’t discover until today that he has a rather good command of English. It turns out that he has visited the US a few times “when [he] was much younger.” His website is here.
The water in the river was unusually high, presumably because of the recent taifun. We had intended to go out to the little island in the river, but the bridges to it were closed. These photos, taken from the bank, illustrate why:
Maybe next time there will be an island to visit. We also bought some tea (how could we not?) and a somewhat silly number of tenugui, an item for which we seem to have a serious collective weakness.
Besides traveling around the world and finding another flood, we found a cat:
Back in Kyoto, we found that the station was graced with the presence of Pikachu, live and in, uh, person:
Only in Japan. Tomorrow we head back to Tokyo.
