Uji & Inari: 03.26.2018 – Day 9

Good Morning, it’s MONDAY!

All time record of the trip!! Woke up around 8:30am, now we are talking!

Starting to get into the time zone habits. 🙂 

We had the opportunity this morning to Skype with my sister and brother-in-law, Erin and Jaron, which was really nice. I get homesick a lot easier than David does.

Once we finished getting ready for our day, we stopped and got hotel coffee for our travel. We took the Marriott bus to Katata station and then took the train to Uji station (one of our destinations for the day).

When we arrived in Uji, we stopped at the info center to ask where we could find an ATM. While there, David also spoke to them about things to do in the town and they recommend attending a tea ceremony.

Along the way, we made a pit stop at a local food window. We ordered some Gyoza with green tea salt (AMAZING!).

After we ate, we continued our journey to the tea ceremony. We took pictures of cherry blossoms along the way.

We stopped at what appeared to be the tea ceremony location on the map. There was an info center a couple feet away, so we stopped inside to confirm we were at the correct location.
David spoke to a person at the info center desk and asked about the tea ceremony. They told us to wait till 3:20 , it was around 2:40pm at this time.

So, to kill time we walked around the town some more. Got green tea ice cream and took pictures by a bridge.

Once 3:20PM came around, we bought tickets and went inside to experience what we thought was going to be a formal tea ceremony. Instead we received an informal tea ceremony due to the language barrier.
The head tea ceremony instructor asked where we are from and started started conversation with us. David then started a back and forth conversation via google translate. This is when we found out that we were not doing a formal tea ceremony. So luckily, our instructor asked if we wanted to experience a formal tea ceremony.

She brought us to another location and the room began to fill quickly with other people (we believe they may have been tourist from Russia). Unfortunately, we were extremely surprised on how disrespectful the other people in the place were during the ceremony. A sign in the room stated no photo or video (clear images with a camera and and X through it) and the head lady asked for them to stop and it took a while for them put their devices away.
I uncomfortably ended up saying something to the group, identifying they should politely follow instruction and put away their cameras.

After the ceremony was complete, we took a picture with the instructor (her name was Michiko Ichiki). She started speaking to us with her senior staff using a voice translator. She was extremely polite and friendly. David and I got so excited, we lost track of time. We were believe we talked with her for about an hour after the tea ceremony ended. 
We learned she has been doing this 5 days a week for 35 years.
She teaches around 20 students at a time.
She also does at home Sake tasting with meals and offered to teach us how to make Matcha. Of course we said yes!!!! We scheduled to meet tomorrow at 10:00AM at different location. She gave us her business card with instructions for tomorrow.

Once we were done, we took the train from Uji to Inari. Immediately exiting the train station, the first thing you see is the Inari gates, incredibly beautiful.

We were both hungry and decided to stop for food before exploring the Inari gates. We ordered Wagyu Skewers (recommended by Missy co-worker Wendy) & potato chip skewers.

We started our hike up the Inari gates around 6:00PM
Went all the way to point 14 “the Summit” and arrived at the Summit around 8:30PM.

At the end of our hike we took a train to Kyoto station, a train to Moryiyama and then a bus to the hotel. This was by far the latest night on trip so far, we got to hotel around 11:30pm.

Sidebar: – The water bottles from vending machine cost twice as much at top of the Summit compared to bottom of the hike.
We ran into a family “the Taylor family” that found a great place to take a picture – super cute idea (see below)

We used Snapchat A LOT – lost phone battery.
While walking down the hike we heard a lot of snoring in the bushes…
This hike by far provides the most beautiful night views of Kyoto.