Tanuki and an early cake

This morning Hayley had a headspa session booked, so after breakfast she went off to that. I took the opportunity to sneak out and get her an early birthday cake, since we are travelling back to Tokyo on her actual birthday tomorrow and I may not get the opportunity. After I found a lovely little cake store and got an almond butter cake (never had one before but it looked tasty), Felix went shopping and got some gifts for Hayley as well.

She came back from her headspa very relaxed and her hair looking great. We held off giving the cake and gifts because we had a mission: Hayley want to buy a Tanuki statue. This a a Japanese symbol of good luck and she had found a pottery store that hand-made them and was highly recommended online. So we grabbed a quick lunch and flagged a taxi to take us there.

The store was in an area on the Northwest outskirts of Kyoto. It turned out to be a lovely area with lots of temples, little craft stores, cafes and parks embedded in a maze of two-way but single lane streets. Large numbers of taxis and hire cars made their way around each other with very Japanese deftness and patience. These were there for the equally large number of both overseas and Japanese tourists wandering around.

The store was just as lovely as promised online and Hayley got her pottery Tanuki statue as well as tiny version for free from the man who made the pottery. Felix also got a small pottery frog for free. Then we wandered around for a bit before deciding to head off.

We had planned to go to the Kyoto Studio Theme Park. It was now a bit late in the day, but we decided to go anyway and have an hour there. The theme park is not very large and is mostly mockups of traditional Japanese streets (though there was also a giant anime robot statue, which looked a little out-of-place). There were various amusements such as a Ninja House, a mechanical monster head that comes out of a pond, and a Haunted House. Felix and I did the haunted house and it was honestly quite scary, with creepy dolls, sudden noises, walls rattling, floors moving, and even including a person in costume who leapt out at you.

We returned to the hotel and surprised Hayley with cake and gifts. The cake was as tasty as it looked.

Tomorrow we catch a bullet train back to Tokyo, after that we have one more day there and then we fly home.

I’m a little tired as I write this so rather than intersperse today’s photos through the text I’ll just put them here: