Japan Trip 2013 - Nishiki Market
Upon settling down our luggages, we then headed to our first destination in Kyoto, which was the famous Nishiki Market. We got a bit lost initially as there were many roads interwinding and we haven't really gotten our bearings for this area. It wasn't really clear on Google Maps as well. Nevertheless we managed to find the market after some guidance from a really nice old Japanese man.
Nishinki market is not exactly a touristy spot (although the whole design is still touristy) but more of a market for locals to shop as well. It's good to see how the locals live their life in this area. Unfortunately time was our biggest enemy again. When we reached this place it was about 4.00pm and everything else in Kyoto seems to close by 5.30pm. The whole visit was quite rushed and there were many stalls that we just walked past.
The overall design was relatively straight forward. The whole market is about 200 metres long...? And the stalls comprises from fish to fruits to vegetables to mini restaurants. A very complete market indeed. Nothing really cheap for us Malaysians to buy though but the fishes looked really tempting.
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| Green tea kuih |
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| Japanese version of mixed rice & mixed dishes(雜飯) |
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| Japanese rice!! If I had more money and luggage space I'd bring one pack home :3 |
Since Japan are very famous for their strawberries, I had been looking high and low for them ever since I landed in Tokyo but to no avail. But finally, I've found one shop that actually sells them considering the strawberry season is long over. Sadly the box of strawberries that I bought were mostly sour ones. Only 2-3 out of the 15 strawberries were sweet. Oh well, can't expect too much from a box that cost ¥650.
We had time to visit of one of the restaurants in the market. The plastic displays outside the restaurant was just too tempting not to go in.
Ordered one of their strawberry shaved ice desserts and it was really, really sweet with an overdose of sweetened condensed milk. @@ It was nice on the first mouthful but everything went downhill after that. Ended up not finishing the dessert. Not in this series of pictures was a fried chocolate that I tried, which was really delicious at ¥90!
Apart from Nishiki market, there were many other streets next door to explore. It is really unfortunate that time is not on our side as the market had already started closing by 5pm. This is also on the list should I return to Kyoto in the future!
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