Where Is All The Sushi?

 One of the main reasons I wanted to come to Japan was because of the sushi and all the scrumptious fish. But once we got here, it became clear that there was no sushi at all in Kyoto. It just wasn't a thing. In fact, I've only had sushi once since we've been here. It was at a festival called Setsubun and we ate long sushi. (It's a roll of sushi that's not cut) And since it was Setsubun, we thought we had to eat it facing North. Every year there's a lucky direction you have to eat it in, and this year's was actually Southeast but we did it wrong. But it wasn't even real sushi, it had egg and mushrooms and spinach and it was kind of sweet. It wasn't bad though.

Zadi eating a big roll in the wrong direction.

But besides sushi there is a ton of other amazing food here. For example, people love tempura. There's some you'd actually never expect like lotus root tempura, squash tempura, and its all so good! There may not be sushi, but there is onigiri. One time, we were going to a shrine, and we found a tiny little onigiri place on the side of the road. The lady who ran it was named Shirley, and she had perfect English because she lived in California until she was nine. It was one of the best and most perfect snacks I've ever had. 

Zadi in front of Shirley's onigiri

We have also been eating a lot of soba, which if you don't know it's like ramen, but is made of buckwheat instead of wheat. Soba is good and we have a few places near our house that we go to often. Yesterday, we went to a soba joint after a hike, and we should have gotten soba but we all got these weird rice bowls that had like mashed up uncooked egg on top. It was so disgusting. But afterwards, we got soft serve ice cream, so it was fine.