📍 Japan Food Tour Part 2: Kyoto 🇯🇵 If you really want to experience Japan, start with the food 🍜

Our Kyoto food tour started at the Statue of Izumo no Okuni, where we met our guide and got a quick breakdown of the area and the cultural significance of Kyoto's food scene. We were actually the only ones on the tour, so it felt like having a local friend show us around. We could ask whatever we wanted and learned so much about Kyoto that we probably would have missed on our own. Our first stop was a traditional restaurant serving Kyoto specialties, including obanzai, which are small vegetable-focused dishes. We also got some beef and three kinds of sake to try. Everything was delicious, and the conversation with our guide continued. Then we walked over to the Pontocho district and stopped by a local izakaya, the kind of place we would never have found ourselves. They've been there since the early 2000s and serve all kinds of small plates alongside an impressive sake selection. We got to try several dishes and different sake pairings with little palate cleansers in between. We were definitely starting to feel the sake and were having an absolute blast. Our final stop was a sake house where we finished the night with even more flavored sake. By the end of it, I felt like I had experienced Kyoto through its food, its drinks, and the stories behind them.