Who needs a simple little cherry when you can have an ENTIRE ice cream cone to top off a parfait?
You can never have too much of a good thing...or so they say, but I think ten other AKPers and I discovered differently on Sunday at the Parfait parlor by Kawaramachi and Sanjo. So this was the plan: Gather ten hungry mouths, forgo lunch, pay 1000 yen each and shovel down one of the biggest - no THE BIGGEST - parfait I have even seen in an hour and a half. It started out beautifully, with gleaming scoops of multicolored ice cream - vanilla, chocolate, coconut, mango, ramune (this blue soda like flavor), strawberry, and who knows what else - giant pocky sticks, cream puffs, waffles, melon slices, and bananas all arranged as elaborately as a piece of artwork. Then it got a little tough when we hit the hidden slabs of frozen brownies and cheese cake, got even messier when we struck deposits of chocolate syrup, and then pretty much erupted in our faces when we hit the layers of yogurt kiwi and mango bits(??) at the bottom. As we neared the end, comments like, "I am dying a slow and painful death", "Is it time to start handing out bowls on the street yet??", "I don't think I can ever look at ice cream again", and "I now know what hell is: coming to this place and eating parfait...forever" starting cropping up with increasing regularity.If you thought the first picture was intense...
check out the MONSTER
Us taking pictures of the monster, still excited and ready for battle
Twenty minutes in...still feeling okay, slightly sick but is that CHEESE CAKE on the spoon??
forty minutes in...苦しい，苦しい。。。put me out of my misery already...
One hour later...mission accomplished. Oh the things we do to ourselves...haha...owwww it hurts
Other recent news:
I saw Alice in Wonderland! Strange movie...sooo random and that dance that Johnny Depp does is so strange it made me laugh. What was almost more interesting than the movie, however, was audience watching the movie haha...It was a full theater, and yet pretty much no one made a sound throughout the whole thing....I mean no response whatsoever, I don't think I heard the slightest nuance of laughter except for the occasionally guffaw let out by Meli who was sitting next to me. Maybe it was because it was all in English and Japanese subtitles and some of the silliness just doesn't translate, but I've been to other movies and it generally seems as if there is less of an audible response in Japanese movie theaters...That and also Japanese always stay and sit politely until the end of the credits. Amazing!
That was Saturday, and then today I went to Kitayama with my host parents for a little day trip. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and we couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather. Kitayama is in the mountains to the north of Kyoto, about an hour by car, and my host parents wanted to take me there because I was reading Old Capital by Kawabata Yasunari, which is set partly in the mountains of Kitayama. I just finished the novel today, and I have to say that after living in Kyoto, it takes on so much more meaning. It is absolutely amazing being able to read the names of places and streets that I go to regularly in the pages of a novel! Everything is so much more vividly rendered...here's a passage in Old Capital that describes the place I went to today:
"The mountains were neither high nor deep. The trunk of each individual tree was visible even on the tops of the mountains. The cedars were used in the construction of tearooms so the appearance fo the groves themselves had the elegant air of the tea ceremony.
The mountains on either side of Kiyotaki River were steep, their sides dropping down into the narrow valley. One reason the famous cedar logs were raised here was that the area received ample rain and little sunshine. It was also protected from the wind. Were a strong wind to strike the trees, the softness of the new growth ring would allow them to grow bent or twisted..."
A really old temple hidden away in the mountains, absolutely beautiful!
After we went to the temple, we made another stop at this really old village. The roofs are still thatched like they were in the olden days. They are super thick and keep the houses really warm in the winter and cool in the summer...
Well, that's it for tonight. Other exciting things in the days to come: Monkey park at Arashiyama and Kurama onsen. woowoo! =)
I saw Alice in Wonderland! Strange movie...sooo random and that dance that Johnny Depp does is so strange it made me laugh. What was almost more interesting than the movie, however, was audience watching the movie haha...It was a full theater, and yet pretty much no one made a sound throughout the whole thing....I mean no response whatsoever, I don't think I heard the slightest nuance of laughter except for the occasionally guffaw let out by Meli who was sitting next to me. Maybe it was because it was all in English and Japanese subtitles and some of the silliness just doesn't translate, but I've been to other movies and it generally seems as if there is less of an audible response in Japanese movie theaters...That and also Japanese always stay and sit politely until the end of the credits. Amazing!
That was Saturday, and then today I went to Kitayama with my host parents for a little day trip. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and we couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather. Kitayama is in the mountains to the north of Kyoto, about an hour by car, and my host parents wanted to take me there because I was reading Old Capital by Kawabata Yasunari, which is set partly in the mountains of Kitayama. I just finished the novel today, and I have to say that after living in Kyoto, it takes on so much more meaning. It is absolutely amazing being able to read the names of places and streets that I go to regularly in the pages of a novel! Everything is so much more vividly rendered...here's a passage in Old Capital that describes the place I went to today:
"The mountains were neither high nor deep. The trunk of each individual tree was visible even on the tops of the mountains. The cedars were used in the construction of tearooms so the appearance fo the groves themselves had the elegant air of the tea ceremony.
The mountains on either side of Kiyotaki River were steep, their sides dropping down into the narrow valley. One reason the famous cedar logs were raised here was that the area received ample rain and little sunshine. It was also protected from the wind. Were a strong wind to strike the trees, the softness of the new growth ring would allow them to grow bent or twisted..."
A really old temple hidden away in the mountains, absolutely beautiful!
After we went to the temple, we made another stop at this really old village. The roofs are still thatched like they were in the olden days. They are super thick and keep the houses really warm in the winter and cool in the summer...
Well, that's it for tonight. Other exciting things in the days to come: Monkey park at Arashiyama and Kurama onsen. woowoo! =)
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