Cooking up a storm

The jet lag is still in place so I’m an early riser again and down to breakfast before 8 o’clock. It’s a good job actually as I have to queue to get into the restaurant. This hotel is a rather swish place, but breakfast was rather a disappointment in terms of service.

What made it brilliant as I munched my way through my french toast. was that I got a phone call from somebody who is very dear to me. Marc was heading home through the streets of Hammersmith as I was sitting looking out of the windows of Kyoto at what I’m told was possibly a typhoon.

It was so nice to hear a familiar voice. It was a good thing. It pepped me up as I picked up my umbrella, purchased in Tokyo on Monday evening, and set off to walk to the Cooking Sun cooking school, for my cookery lesson this morning. The walk was 1.3 miles, which didn’t look much on a dry day, but when they said typhoon, they meant Typhoon. It was only when I was halfway there, and it dawned on me that I’d packed my Aime Leon Dore cagoule, an item bought in a whimsical moment in her New York store, and possibly the most expensive piece of rainwear I think I’ll ever own. It works really well as rain protection while it’s lying in a suitcase in a hotel now over half a mile away.

The cookery lesson was absolutely first rate. Myself, an American family of three from somewhere near Atlanta and an American couple were the participants. I have to say “Boy are the Americans cashing in on the fact that Japan is open again.”

But we were a companionable bunch of our teachers, Maya and Sia ( I love her disco work) were are great form.

First we made egg roll, which later on would from the central part of our sushi. We made a stock which would later on become part of a miso soup, and in which we would cook the spinach for our spinach and sesame salad. We made a full plate of sushi with crab meat, shiitake mushrooms, sweet potato and we did teriyaki chicken and Tempura pumpkin, beans and shrimps.

They worked us hard. We cooked continuously for more than two and a half hours to make enough food to fill out beautiful Bento boxes, and then we had a companionable lunch together. It was a fantastic morning.

So much so that at 12:30 when the door opened and my guide arrived to collect me for the afternoon sightseeing, all thoughts of a typhoon and rain had left my mind. Unfortunately, it hadn’t left Kyoto. We put up our umbrellas and walked quite a way to the indoor food market which was a real treat. The street food here is phenomenal. And the market was packed with people. I refer back to the comments about Americans.

We then got the subway to Kyoto castle, which, outside, I had the air of a fairytale Palace, with white watchtowers and pagoda roofs, and which inside was the most atmospheric and beautiful building.

Beautiful screens in each room, the originals having been reproduced to give a real feel of what the police must’ve looked like. The atmosphere is unbelievable. The best thing I loved was the

floor which creaked my design. Ill fitting nails are laid in a certain way so that as you walk along the floor, no shoes, having left them in the hall, the floorboards creak to warn people of your approach. This is known as a Nightingale floor. It . sings! And one could hear it singing as people made their way round the palace.

A taxi then took us to the Golden Pavilion on the outskirts of the city, which looked absolutely magnificent nestling in the trees on the shores of an artificial lake, the residence of the 13th century Shogun. Or so I thought, until my guide told me that this had been built in 1957, the original having been destroyed fire. so magnificent as it was, as we walked in the grounds, I couldn’t get out of my head that basically I paid to visit something that looks like a film set.

The weather didn’t turn into the aforementioned typhoon. But when it rains here, fuck me, it rains.