Cat Café Nekokaigi

As those adult contemporary legends the Carpenters said in 1975: after long enough of being alone everyone must face their share of loneliness. Year abroad can be a bit of a troubling experience at times - the language barrier makes it so difficult to make Japanese friends and there aren't always opportunities to meet with your fellow foreign students either. Although my family and I are by no means the closest and have had our fair share of horrible arguments over the years, I've found it unexpectedly hard being away from them for so long and not being able to just hop on a train and go home for a weekend like I could in Cambridge. We are separated by 6000-odd miles and a rather pricey 12-hour flight. Besides I spent most of the summer with my best friend in the entire world, who came with me on all of my previous visits to Japan and therefore her absence makes me feel a bit like one of my arms has fallen off. Not to mention I can't think of a single other person who'd be willing to dress up as a maid and take purikura photos with me.

The point of all this emotional rambling is: sometimes when the chips are down you just need to spend some time in a room full of cats to take your mind off things. Being a crazy cat-obsessed old woman trapped in the body of a charming and beautiful 21-year-old, I decided to treat myself by paying a visit to Neko Kaigi (猫会議 'cat meeting') cat cafe. It's very near me, between Sanjo and Karasumaoike, just down the street from the Kyoto city hall. In general I really love animals but since our family has had cats since I was little it feels weird not having one around. Also I've heard that stroking animals is very therapeutic and can lower your blood pressure so clearly there was nothing to lose.

The first time I came to Japan I'd visited the other cat cafe, Wan Nyan Chu in Teramachi, but since it was Sunday and I only had 1000 yen left for the week I went for Neko Kaigi which only charges 900 yen for an hour as opposed to 1000 for half an hour. You can buy a drink but (luckily for me!) it's not obligatory. They also have treats for the cats.

When you come in you have to take off your shoes and put your bag away in a locker. You're allowed to take photos of the cats but only without the flash so it doesn't scare them. It is basically a big room with a wood floor, with low sofas and coffee tables around the edges and a big mat with cushions, baskets and trees for the cats to sit on. Neko Kaigi has 15 very cute cats ranging in size from teeny tiny to "shit it's a tiger". They all have adorable names too - my favourite of which were Choco and Himawari (ひまわり 'sunflower').

The problem with cat cafes is half the cats seem to be extremely done with being prodded all day and the other half just want to sleep. If you are really lucky or have made a habit of smoking catnip one of them might get on your lap. Even if they weren't too keen on being stroked it was fun to watch them interacting with each other and the way two of them were sleeping all squashed up together in the basket was too cute for words. They did, however, perk up when the scratch board came out - I assume this was full of some sort of addictive cat substance because they went absolutely mad to have a go on it. In the end I think it was definitely worth going. I felt very relaxed afterwards and was just sad that you aren't allowed to take the cats home with you.

Autumn in Kyoto

You might have heard of 花見 (hanami 'flower viewing'), where everyone gets time off work in the spring to go and have a little party in the park and look at the cherry blossom. However I didn't realise there is a rough parallel in the autumn, 紅葉 (kōyō 'autumn colours'). Around mid-November the leaves on the Japanese maple trees begin to turn this beautiful shade of red. I was surprised that it started so late in the year since where I come from you can see leaves beginning to fall around September. In Kyoto, though, the weather remained warm well into October so I expect in the colder north things are more similar to the UK. From my friend who does rickshaw tours I hear the town of Arashiyama and Kyoto's many temples are very busy with foreign and Japanese tourists alike at this time of year, no doubt hoping to get some good photos.

On my way to and from class I can go through the palace park if I fancy a change from the picturesque views of the main road. I decided to stop and take a few crappy phone photos since there are quite a few very brightly-coloured maple trees in the park. Scenes like these make me wish I had more time and skill as they would be lovely to paint. Perhaps I could commission the old people who can often be seen sitting around Doshisha doing watercolours of the more attractive buildings. My 0.01 megapixel phone camera doesn't quite do them justice but you can see how the red stands out. It looks especially pretty when the sun is out, enhancing the colours.

Review: Mumokuteki Cafe むもくてきカフェ

Last night I went out for dinner with my friend Ryotaro to Mumokuteki Cafe (無目的 'without purpose') in Nakagyo Ward, near Kawaramachi Station. The plan was originally to go for Italian food but once I arrived at our meeting place he told me he'd found somewhere doing organic food that I'd like. Personally I don't care at all what kind of chemicals you've slathered all over my vegetables, but in the context of restaurants in Japan the concepts of organic and vegetarian/vegan seem to go hand in hand quite often.

Slightly disappointed that I was now not going to be spending the next hour or so stuffing my face with pizza, I headed up the stairs. Mumokuteki also owns what I think is a second-hand clothes and goods shop, which is on the ground floor below the restaurant. The place itself is quite big, with a cafe section and a restaurant section. We were sitting in the cafe section which had very comfortable armchairs.

Initially I wasn't sure if there was meat on offer since the photos in the extensive menu looked very convincing. The food is actually vegan but most of the dinner sets include miso soup, which contains dashi (fish stock). I appreciated that this is clearly marked on the menu with a little picture of a fish next to the dish's name and an explanation. For the less hypocritical among us there are plenty of choices which don't include dashi, such as spaghetti, curry and burgers, and I expect if you were really keen on trying one of the sets you could ask to have it with no miso soup. I'm really not sure why dashi would be used in an otherwise vegan setting. However as far as I noticed it's not explicitly advertised as a vegan or vegetarian place and the focus seems to be more on organic vegetables and soy products.

Anyway, the food: after a lot of dithering I went for the miso katsu plate. It was a hard decision as there was so much choice and it all looked excellent! You can choose between brown rice, mixed grain rice or a combination of the two. I went for half and half but next time would choose mixed grain, which was a bit more flavourful for having salt and pepper on it. Besides the rice and the katsu, there were 3 vegetable side dishes, a bowl of miso soup and some tomatoes in a sort of oil and vinegar based sauce. Ryo went for the boiled tofu hamburger plate which is one of the dinner specials, and commented that you couldn't tell it was tofu because of the sauce. I was hoping I might get offered a taste but no such luck there...

The tofu katsu was absolutely brilliant. I haven't eaten meat in several years now but the texture seemed very meat-like and the breadcrumb coating was crispy and not at all soggy. I would have liked there to be a bit more of the miso sauce though as it provided most of the flavour. It came with quite a large quantity of salad. I wasn't really keen on the cold vegetable sides, which I felt were a bit bland except for one which tasted similar to kimchi. I'm a bit picky about vegetables and have never been terribly keen on cabbage though, so this might just be me. The sweet tomatoes were lovely, I could quite happily have eaten about 5 of those.

Since I don't often have the chance to eat vegan desserts I decided it would really be rude not to order one, and went for the cheesecake, made with tofu in lieu of cream cheese. It had a slightly different texture to dairy cheesecake - slightly wobbly, similar to Japanese pudding. I loved the texture and cinnamon flavour of the (sadly not buttery biscuit) base which I think was made with oats. I also tried some of Ryo's soy ice cream that came as part of the dinner special. This was the first time I'd ever tried non-dairy ice cream. It is different - slightly less solid, more icy and has a very subtle taste that is hard to put your finger on.

Overall verdict: 4/5 stars
You get a lot of delicious vegan food for the price (mains: 900-1200 yen, desserts: 500-900 yen). I would definitely come back again. In particular I was interested by the burgers, desserts and milkshakes which I wasn't quite hungry enough for this time. Excellent job Mumokuteki.

IMPORT STORES HAUL!

Here is an amazing photo of the fruits of my cycling all over Kyoto this evening, presented on the lovely pale brown blanket which was part of my rental futon set. 

I visited La Cave de Yamaya near Karasumaoike station and Meidi-ya, which Google Maps told me was just near Karasumaoike but was actually in Sanjo just outside the Teramachi undercover shopping street, about 5 or 10 minutes' cycle away.

 The purpose of this expedition was to find Dairy Milk chocolate, one of the more ordinary targets of my increasingly weird British food cravings. The other day it was lemon curd and today it was Heinz tomato soup, neither of which I have eaten in years. Neither of the shops I visited had it but I'm told the import shop near Kyoto station does. Tragic although this was I got some Lindt which is arguably just as good.

Any of my English-speaking friends in Kyoto will have been subjected to my moaning about wanting salt and vinegar crisps for several weeks now. I was hoping to find Tyrrell's - admittedly a very long shot but luckily La Cave de Yamaya had this American brand instead. You might notice that in the picture the packet is open since I just couldn't wait...they are similar to Kettle Chips you get in the UK and very nice! Next time I will go for the intriguing pizza flavoured Pringles.

Also pictured: brown penne pasta - spaghetti is readily available in Japan, although strangely, pasta shapes are more expensive and not so easy to find. Both stores had an excellent selection although La Cave was much cheaper. I got some pesto to go with it, for the Cambridge student special (or is this just Homerton?).

The weird brown object is a muffin made with brown rice from Meidi-ya which has a small bakery section. 

As for the packet curry and the jelly sweets I mainly bought those because I was so excited to find something vegetarian! Gelatine-free sweets are not common even in the UK so obviously I had to have them. An annoyingly large number of foods here are not OK for vegetarians including vegetable soup (or basically any kind of soup - chicken extract) and soy meat (!!! also chicken extract). WHERE IS THE NEED I ask you.

I will definitely be visiting these shops again for a massive jar of pasta sauce once my pesto runs out, Speculoos biscuits and possibly some Nutella if I'm in a really bad mood...

My room in Kyoto

I was very happy to have wangled a place in Richard's House, one of Doshisha's international student dormitories, as it is much closer to campus than my college in Cambridge. Here I can get up at 8 for a 9am start as opposed to 7.30, which of course makes all the difference, or it does when you have a habit of staying up until stupid o'clock for no reason like I do.

There is an ensuite with a bath, which I also didn't have in Cambridge. I'm still not sure if you're supposed to stand on the floor outside the bath and shower like people usually do in Japan, as there is a drain there. It makes more sense to stand in the bath and do it as the bathroom is quite cramped and otherwise your toilet paper is going to end up a soggy useless mess.

Another nice addition to the room is a fridge/freezer combination Homertonians can only dream of. For the last 2 years I have shared a fridge with about 8 other people, resulting in many thefts of Lurpak Spreadable (please forgive me for that) and disgusting mouldy vegetables that had become hidden under a mountain of other stuff. Also there was no freezer which meant if you wanted some Ben and Jerry's you would have to eat the entire 500ml tub in one go - a feat I was able to manage a few years ago but now sadly I have lost that particular talent. I will admit to forgetting it is there on occasion but rest assured the freezer has been put to excellent use so far. Last week I bought a  set of 6 mini Haagen Dazs ice cream tubs and it is currently home to a solitary slice of brown bread. There is also a hot plate and sink so you can cook in your room without having to make awkward conversation in the communal kitchen.

My only issues are that the big glass door at the far end of the room renders it baking in the daytime and absolutely sub-zero at night. The room is also long rather than wide and has a hard floor but if you aren't planning to use it for stretching or trying to learn a K pop dance for 5 minutes before giving up then that probably isn't a problem.

Here are some pictures. Notice I have tried to make it my own (i.e. chucked stuff all over the floor). Included is a view from the balcony.
Having written this post I can really see a career for myself in real estate!!

Hello!

It's a beautiful sunny day in Kyoto today so what better way to make the most of it than...sitting indoors typing on my computer?

I've been meaning to write a blog for a while as a sort of diary for my year here in Japan but hadn't got round to it. But let me tell you this isn't a regular blog - this is a COOL blog! (What I mean by that is I will use it mainly to review snack foods.) I've already done a little bit of sightseeing since I arrived here at the end of August so I'll make posts about those too.

Today I had a break in between morning and afternoon classes, so I went on a jolly cycle ride to one of Kyoto's most esteemed landmarks - the regional immigration bureau. Verdict: 5 stars. Very efficient and the man who dealt with my form had a special tie on. Now I am the proud owner of a work permit stamp on my passport and residence card. This is great news as it means I can't be deported for receiving money from bored salarymen in exchange for making small talk in my best posh accent.

Anyway, on my way back I decided to cycle along the Kamo River since the weather was so nice. Seeing the river always makes me a bit nostalgic because I was in Japan last spring when the cherry blossom was just starting to come out. It is just as pretty in the autumn and full of interesting birds. Before I make myself sound like a massive nerdy birdwatcher let me clarify: when I was a kid I loved reading absolutely anything and spent so long looking at my dad's ancient book of birds that I inadvertently memorised a lot of their names. Besides it is always interesting to come across wildlife that you can't find in your own country, unless it's a giant hornet or a poisonous spider maybe..!

Here is a SICK PANO of the river to kick off this year abroad blog.