Love was in the air as we walked down to Shimogamo shrine.
Seriously, this is a sweet picture, isn’t it?
And despite, or perhaps because of, a volumific but uninspiring luncheon, we were more than willing to eat more. Especially given our love of sweets, and generic desire to eat mitarashi dango while in Kyoto. This place looked promising and was close to packed inside, which can’t be a bad thing.
Outside, the waitress tried to tell us it was full, but that was silly and we just sat down on the opposite side of a bench. Love was in the air out here too, it just wasn’t looking at each other or anything.
Does anyone know why benches are covered with red fabric in Japan? I’m interested.
Nothing says ‘romance’ more than mitarashi dango, don’t you think? The burnt white balls of pounded sticky rice, the thick sweet sauce, the 5 balls to indicate a head and four limbs…looks like nothing much, but tastes good. Worth eating, I’d put it that way.
Amazingly, this shop that we stumbled on seems to have invented mitarashi dango, which is a cool little find even though we were completely oblivious to it.
The walabi mochi was good too, despite having nothing to do with mochi (or wallabies, maaaaate). It’s cubes of jelly made from bracken starch, and the powder is dried, toasted, ground soy beans. Which are surprisingly yummy.
Which may indicate that I’ve just gone too native.
075-791-1652