summer here!

I went out with my old friend today. It was such a beautiful day!! We rode bikes around Teramachi st, which is one of our favorite areas for window shopping.

There are many tiny hidden shops selling "zakka" (various cute household items), clothes and more in this area. And I always wonder how those shop owners survive. Anyways, I love visiting the small shops with full of great taste, and am amazed by the selection of their goods and how they display the store and the products.

It was a hot day, so we decided to have "kori" dessert as the first time of this year at Hayashiya. Kori is a dish of thin shaved ice with syrup. You have to have kori to cool you down in Kyoto's humid and incredibly uncomfortable hot summer. The kori in the picture is huge amount of ice with condensed milk and green tea syrup, rice-flour dumpling around, sweet red beans inside and green tea ice cream on top!! This is as big as my face. And it was said "mini size" on the menu.. what did it look like if I ordered a regular size?

Riding my bike home, I overheard the music "kon tiki tin". Local people were practicing the music for Gion festival which is held in the middle of July. It is such a summer sound of Kyoto. I am so happy that I came back to this town.