Authentic, Seasonal Japanese Home-Cooking with a Charming Kyoto Local - Day Trip

Traveling Spoon

Michiyo's bright home is a peaceful respite from the bustle of Kyoto's city center. Her house, a quick 10-minute train ride from Kyoto station, is nestled in a residential neighborhood and has beautiful views of the famous Hiei-zan mountain. Michiyo enjoys cooking for friends and family and experimenting with new flavors and ingredients she discovers. Whenever she is out and eats something new and interesting, she tries to recreate the flavor at home in her own style. Michiyo's passion for cooking developed while she lived abroad for five years - she loved inviting her neighbors who were from all over the world to introduce them to authentic Japanese cooking. She realized she was happiest when cooking and feeding people and further honed her cooking skills at a culinary school after returning to Japan. Michiyo looks forward to welcoming travelers into her family home and connecting with travelers through the love that she puts into her food. Michiyo will pick guests up at the train station in her car and drive three minutes to her home. Michiyo and her husband, who live with their well-behaved daschsund dog, will invite you for a cultural immersion into Japanese food, drinks, hospitality, and tradition. Your Japanese feast will begin with a welcome beverage and be followed by authentic dishes such as nikujaga (slow-cooked meat with potatoes and seasonal vegetables), a tofu side dish and dashi-based soup, followed by a main course of perhaps chirashi-sushi or tender fried chicken flavored with Japanese ingredients. If you book a cooking experience, Michiyo will lead travelers in a hands-on cooking class in her kitchen. Travelers will learn how to make dashi stock, a fundamental building block of Japanese cuisine, and to perfectly prepare sushi rice for chirashi-sushi, garnished and served in a traditional Japanese wooden rice bowl. The cooking portion of the experience is about 90 minutes.

Vacation Inclusions

• Meal
• Cooking Class (optional)
• Lunch (12pm-2pm Meal, or 10:30am-1:30pm Cooking Lesson) OR Dinner (6-8pm Meal, or 5-8pm Cooking Lesson)
• Alcohol available

Featured Destinations

Kyoto Kyoto If you can visit only one city in Japan, Kyoto is the one. This ancient city, 30 mi/50 km northeast of Osaka, was the capital of Japan for more than 1,000 years and still is considered the country's spiritual capital. Thousands of shrines and temples dot the city, including more than a dozen on the UNESCO World Heritage list. That list is far from all-inclusive, and many excellent places that might be the star attractions of other cities crowd the streets of Kyoto. It is a center of Japanese Zen and has several huge monastery complexes where serious students still sit in meditation. Kyoto is also the nation's capital of traditional arts. Whether your interest be in pottery, textiles, dance, the tea ceremony or any of the other innumerable arts, Kyoto has excellent galleries, museums, shops and tea houses. Japanese people from the countryside and foreign students flock there to learn under the great masters. Much of what is considered Japanese haute cuisine was developed there too, as an offshoot of the tea ceremony. Kyoto is Japan's heartland of history. With 1,300 years of tumultuous existence, the city's past intrudes upon the present day as in few other Japanese cities. In Gion, you can spot a geisha (or geiko, as they are called in Kyoto), one of the last hundred or so in Japan, slipping down a side-street to entertain rich guests with witty conversation, dance or music. A shopping arcade may suddenly fill with discordant clanging music as a shrine festival passes among the shoppers, or you may hear the long chant as Zen monks pass through the neighborhood, calling for alms. Kyoto is an understated city that might disappoint visitors at first (at first glance, it is a large city with modern buildings that might not align with one's original perception); its charm lies in small details, pocket gardens, tiny traditional restaurants and refined artwork.

Destination Guide

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