Ichijoji – Kyoto battleground of Ramen noodles / Gokkei

Sep. 3, 2016

September of this year came. It has become a little bit less hot in the morning and night. This could be a sign of autumn?, maybe influence of typhoon.

Since opening of our guesthouse in this January, 8months already went with no real problem. I would like to say thank you to our guests and people support us.

As usual, Kyoto in July and August had hot summer. I believe our guests enjoyed activities in Kyoto through a day and knew such hot summer of Kyoto better than me (*^^*).

My blog of this time is a part of the series, Ichijoji – Kyoto battleground of Ramen noodles. This is the second article at last, since May.

The name of this ramen shop is “Gokkei”, a combination of two Chinese characters 極”Gok” + 鶏”Kei”. “Gok” literally means Ultimate, and “Kei” means Chicken meat.

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This restaurant is one of the most popular ramen shops in Kyoto making a long queue. Normally, I try to avoid queuing, but I endured a long waiting time (LOL). In our case, it took 2 hours to enter the restaurant.

I choose “Tori-daku”. The soup is very thick, no more in the form of a liquid! It is a more paste like, but  with full of tasty chicken meat. This is my quite first experience of eating, not drinking the very thick “soup”.  I enjoyed a large size of Menma (Bamboo Shoots) too.

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My husband choose “Sakana-daku”.

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A lot of shavings of dried fish is added on the thick “soup”, creating a different tasty flavor.

The shop offers 4 kinds of ramen. Others are “Kuro-daku” and “Aka-daku”. I need to find out how taste they are in the next time, maybe different time zone which may have shorter queue.

Please try this thick soup of Gokkei. (^^♪

Visiting to Hyo-neko no mori (Kyoto Bengal Cat Forest)🐈

June 2, 2016

Today’s theme is about cats I love very much.

“Kyoto Hyo-neko no mori” (literally, woods of leopard cats) and “Kyoto Fukurou no mori” (literally, woods  of owls), standing next to each other, opened this March at Shin-Kyogoku Street, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto City,  a shopping arcade in downtown of Kyoto.  I have been waiting for this opportunity since I heard about  these places from one of our guests, and finally visited there today.

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Admission fee is 600 Yen for 30 minutes. If you want to visit both places, the common admission fee will  be 1100 Yen.

It seems no official website for the 2 facilities yet, so I cannot show you a good map, but you will find  them at the right hand side if you walk a little on Shin-Kyogoku street from Shi-jo street.

Hyo-neko, the Bengal cat is an expensive cat, can be sold for around 3000 dollars at pet shops, which  is out of average people league, so this is an amazing experience for me.

As they are young cats, they are so active, keep running around and jumping. The time I visited there  was around half past 6 o’clock in the evening that was already after their napping, and their eyes are  enough glowing and glaring !

Holding a cat in your arms is not allowed in this facility, but no problem because they are so friendly  that they came to me ,jumped on my knees and smelled about contents of my bag.

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Their so much lovely behavior made the 30 minutes pass very quickly (^^)/

One more shot of using a litter box…

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His (Her?) strained but relaxed look is also the cutest!

In the next time, I hope I have enough time to try “Fukurou no mori” as well. I believe cat lovers will not be able to resist this place when visiting Shin-Kyogoku street.