The last second day we spent in Kyoto was for shopping, there was so much to see, so much to do everyday. But most of all, SO much to eat.

We started the day first by heading straight to soba at honke owariya, an imperial family purveyor which started out as a confectionery which perfected soba kiri, the art of making and cutting soba dough and when demand was high, the confectionery started to supply food to temples

We had soba with tempura and a Hourei Soba which constituted a many layered soba with 8 types of condiments 

You could actually construct your own soba flavour with the different condiments. The end of a soba meal always came with sobayu, which was as comforting and nutritious you could imagine.

The specialty was also a soba warabi mochi and soba biscuit ! 

We headed to nishiki market for a walk but it didn’t last long when my heart reaches out for Kyoto sweets

So we walked to Saryo Suisan and had freshly made hot warabi mochi and tea

There was brown sugar syrup and kinako powder and you could make your own

We traced our steps back to daimaru and Takashimaya then chanced upon another eel place Unawa for dinner. The meal with superb narazuke, a type of pickle seasoned with fresh sake lees. You needed only a bit for and you would get the sake fragrance. Said to contain lots of calcium and minerals, this was good to pair with unagi and helped with digestion.

Then HuaiHao gave me a lesson on intention 

He had been so into the Rubik’s cube and really wanted to get one

And as life and the law of attraction had it, before dinner he found it in Tokyu Hands and stunned fellow customers who saw how he could unscramble and solve a Rubik’s cube within a span of a 2 minutes 

After dinner he insisted on finding more, and he DID

We just strolled and he said to get into a building and there was a basement level of toys – and there were Rubik’s cubes there too!

In my face – he delivered this lesson to me. 

I looked at my own journey

• I wanted to go to kurama a while ago
• I wanted to travel to be in the season be in place
• And I came

What are my intentions I had to ask myself? What do I want to do? What would be meaningful to me? Why am I on this journey?

And I just marvelled at this teaching Huaihao delivered. Kyoto is so big and it is not easy to achieve a find, at least, it required effort. Yet he found the things he wanted-pretty effortlessly, he just walked into it. He just didn’t buy them because they were not good enough for him

Writing this now made me aware how much of my journey he is echoing. Of late, I also had been on a hunt for possible employment. But very much like his search, nothing purposeful came up. Or at least, the jobs I applied for were what I thought I could do, like-I think I can, because I can suppress something of myself to do it. But not what I want .

Interestingly though, with Ed Spina’s clearing session, 2 opportunities have realised and they are things which have not occured to me to be a possibility. It speaks of the need to be open-really open minded enough to let in what is for me.