16 November 2023
Night of the long corridors
Kyoto covered shopping areas
Look closely at tonight's pics, none of them are outside.
My hotel has a corridor that goes to a lift (elevator) that goes down to the subway. This connects to a really long corridor of nothingness that goes all the way to the covered shopping streets, one of which is called Teramachi. These connect to another underground shopping centre at the end, which is called zest. I then came back up the other parallel shopping street, which connects to the covered food street, Nishiki market, this connects to the Daimaru department store which connects back to the subway and back to my hotel. So you can go for miles without being exposed to the night sky.
Why is this important? Because tonight it is not raining, tomorrow it probably will be, so why did I do this tonight and not tomorrow?
I have taken photos of all the long corridors, both above and underground.
Starting with the long corridor of nothingness, which I remember from previous visits. It goes all the way under Shijo-dori, the main street, but has no shops in it, no vending machines, and almost no advertising.
No advertising until you get to the end where it becomes a long corridor of a real life advertisement of a life size super mario game (what I wrote here makes no sense at all).
Half way along the Shinkyogoku shopping street (I just looked up the name) you get to a capsule store that a small aircraft has crashed into.
This is an extensive display, of how the covering, of the covered shopping street was restored from it's sun damaged yellow to be 9 shades whiter. First they identified the ladders they needed. Then the rags to clean the roof...
The big boss guitar store is still here.
I found my dinner here, Chinese food in Japan. Why not? Lanzhou beef noodle soup, my favourite. Seemed pretty authentic to me, they had the proper chilli and vinegar to add to it. This has been my favourite for many many years, long before a Lanzhou hand pulled noodles shop turned up on every Melbourne street corner to replace they outgoing hot pot restaurants.
I got to the end of the covered shopping streets, time to head back underground.
Inside the Zest underground mall, and on the right is a place I ate at the very first time I came to Kyoto, I remember the crazy old lady that served me. I peered through the window and confirmed she died years ago.
After the underground it was time to head back down the main covered street, different to the one shown earlier, this one is Teramachi, probably the nicer of the two main ones.
And then a right turn into Nishiki market, which surprisingly still had some mainly seafood eating places still open.
Tomorrow is supposed to be raining, I have plans to go to a short hike, but a weather check will be required.