Beignets-OK. First things first... We found a Cafe du Monde in Kyoto. We were wandering around Kyoto Station waiting for Carlos to finish his little nap in his stroller before we got in a cab and what do we see? CAFE DU MONDE. Beignets, Cafe Au Laits, green metal awnings with New Orleans street signs. We almost DIED (not because of the typhoon we narrowly missed or the 6.7 on the Richter scale earthquake, or the nuclear waste leak). I mean, this is HEAVEN. We went there three times while we were in Kyoto. It was totally Japanified with no actual paper napkins (only wet wipes), some wierd looking egg sandwiches, and some sort of green tea slushy offering, but WHO CARES. We had beignets, we had our iced cafe au laits. I mean, really. It almost made me believe in someone up there (the birth of my son didn't make me find religion, but beignets did! Hallelujah!).
The Cone of Probability-Despite our move thousands of miles from New Orleans, Saturday night I found myself staring into a computer screen at the Cone of Probability wondering if and the giant typhoon headed up from Okinawa was going to strike the town of Nara, where we were vacationing. On a laptop next to the ryokan (Japanese bed and breakfast) owner, I stared down the cone feeling about 50% terrified. Before we went to bed, he told me it would hit at 2AM. Yuck.
Thankfully, we awoke to an overcast day and no typhoon in sight.
The Deer Ate My Shinkansen Ticket-Nara, a small city 45 minutes outside of Kyoto is exquisite. It is everything we expected Kyoto to be. Kyoto is a much noisier and more urban city. Nara is much like New Orleans with beautiful little houses in a central area and temples great and small peppered all around it. Besides the giant Buddha and the gorgeous temples, Nara is famous for small deer that live in the parks. They are so sweet until you try to feed them with the crackers you can buy and then they nudge you with their antlers and their little noses. Poor Carlos did not find this amusing. One even went into my open purse sitting in the stroller and ate a map and my return ticket from Kyoto to Nagoya on the bullet train (the Shinkansen)... a fifty dollar ticket. Ooops.
They look cute, don't they? Don't let them fool you.
3 comments:
Beignets! Yippee. What a nice slice of home.
Stay away from those typhoons (aka hurricanes). Very bad.
Jenny, You crack me up! Just the picture of Cafe du Monde Japan gave me such a pang for home! I nearly cried (forget nearly, I actually did get teary-eyed) when I saw Abita beer here in Michigan! Isn't it great when something NOLA gets exported?
Jenny, You crack me up! Just the picture of Cafe du Monde Japan gave me such a pang for home! I nearly cried (forget nearly, I actually did get teary-eyed) when I saw Abita beer here in Michigan! Isn't it great when something NOLA gets exported?
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