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Master Sweet Maker Ji'ichiro Kunieta in Action

Part of Aunt Jeannette's tour of Kyoto was a visit to a tea room to experience Japanese sweet making. The tour guide not only let me tag along, but let me enjoy the events as well, so I got to see the sweets being made, take some pictures, and then eat them. 🙂

The sweet maker is master Ji'ichiro Kunieta (國枝治一郎), who has been specializing in a particular genre of sweets for 40 years, taking over from his father as the fourth generation of a shop, Matsuya (松彌), started by his great-grandfather in 1888. It's apparently quite famous, as a search of the name brings up quite a bit.

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Preparing for the Demonstration

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Starting a Hydrangea-Shaped Sweet

For the demonstration, he made a hydrangea-shaped sweet with a sweet-bean center. He also brought along what's apparently his most famous sweet, a goldfish in gelatin. The tea house hosting the event provided both hot and cold teas, for a wonderful little stack.

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Hydrangea-Shaped Sweets Lined Up

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Ready to Serve

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Hydrangea and Goldfish

Sweets tend to be highly seasonal, and this is the season for both hydrangea and goldfish. In fact, at the moment, we have hydrangea at the livingroom window (as can be seen in the background of these pictures.

The gelatine one represents the water with two fish and a lily pad. You can see some goldfish in the picture below, sort of. It's the view we had out the window of the tea house, and in the river at the bottom of the frame you can see an orange haze... a school of little goldfish.

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View From the Tea Room

The little bridge in the photo below is where I took the first shot shown in my Night Cherry Blossoms in the Gion area of Kyoto post two months ago, and is in the same immediate area as these Night Long-Exposure Gion Cherry-Blossoms shots.

Leaning a bit out the window, the river ran right beside the tea room...

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River View From the Tea Room

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Master Sweet Maker Ji'ichiro Kunieta

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Tearoom Entry
(Exit to outside at left)

In preparing this post, it took me several hours to figure out the name of the sweets shop, having only the photos showing the name on his shirt and hat. It turns out that the form of the second character used in that embroidery is a nonstandard form not in any dictionary I could find, online or otherwise. I eventually found a reference to him and his sweets after trying all kinds of web searches consisting of terms like (the Japanese versions of) “Kyoto”, “Nijo”, “Sweets”, “Matsu”, “goldfish”, and “hydrangea”. He's near Nijo-Kawaramachie (in Kyoto, Japan, of course)

Having spent those several hours tracking him down, and finding that he was fairly close, I felt obliged to treat myself to some more of his sweets, so picked some up on the way home from Anthony's Jumping gymnastics class. They await me in the fridge now. 🙂

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Kibune Shrine... From the Back... Sort Of

Having visited Kibune with Aunt Jeannette yesterday, I was reminded of my trip to Kibune a month ago. On that trip, we'd eaten at the northern-most restaurant (Hirobun — ひろ文), then made a short climb to a mini “associated shrine” area related to the larger Kibune Shrine (貴船神社) located half a kilometer downstream.

It was a little, quiet area with a small gate and a tiny shrine. In the photo above, the road and restaurant are out of sight below the gate.

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Wish Holder Thing

The shrine had two little places for tying wish papers, one of which is shown in the photo above at left. They seemed older than the mini shrine itself, which looked to have been recently rebuilt.

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Wishes

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Roof of the Wish Holder Thing

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A Wish or Two

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The Story

From what I understand (which is mostly from Fumie's explanation at the time, and from reading the sign above a bit), the famous post Izumi Shikibu (和泉式部 — born exactly 1,000 years before Fumie) came to the Kibune Shrine because she was unhappy with her relationship with her husband. She sat at the river and saw a firefly and heard a voice or something, blah blah blah, and everything was fine after that.

So, this shrine is for relationships (family, spousal, business, etc.), so one might presume that the wishes are related to that. I'm not sure whether this mini shrine area commemorates the firefly/voice thing, and thus is the relationship shrine, or whether the whole of the Kibune Shrine took on that meaning. It doesn't really matter though... it's a quiet, peaceful, photogenic place, so I'm happy to visit.

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It Fit Right Here!

We spent another day with Aunt Jeannette, this time partially at home. She brought a Thomas lunch box and puzzle for Anthony, and helped him do it. It was slow going at first, but they built up steam as he got hooked.

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Looking for a Fit

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Did It!

We also took the time to push my scooter out front and pose for a few pictures....

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Standard Pose

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Pretending-to-be-Driving-Wildly-Fast Pose

The best part of the day was a lunch in Kibune, which I'll write about another time. It was a really fantastic experience.

Aunt Jeannette is here on a tour run by Alumni Holidays, with others from all around The States. The tours are apparently arranged well, because most people in the group have been on other tours run by the same company, elsewhere in the world. (For her part, Aunt Jeannette is on her 8th tour with this group.)

Anyway, this morning when I met up with Aunt Jeannette, I chatted with another member of her tour, Madeline, and promised to post a shot of her I took in the gardens of the Heian Shrine the other day. Here it is:

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Madeline in Kyoto

I don't know how many tours she's been on, but potentially many: she's 88 years young! One of her granddaughters has a son Anthony's age.

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KFC and Verena in Kyoto

When it rains it pours. I hadn't had someone visit from The States for three years, and this week I'm enjoying two visits, my Aunt Jeannette as I noted yesterday, and separately, an old colleague from Yahoo! who now lives in Singapore, Kuan-Fu Chang (aka “KFC”), and his wife, also a former Yahoo!, Verena Wee.

I particularly enjoyed how they're both somewhat camera geeks, so I enjoyed taking pictures of them taking pictures.

I'd met them for dinner the other night, bringing along my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 for the low light, watching as they photographed the various dishes as they arrived. In the shot below, it's a tomato dish, with scallions and grated daikon, and was quite good.

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Before the Feast, the Photograph

Today we walked around my place, visiting the gardens of Murin'an, the Nanzen Temple, and the Shogunzuka hilltop overlooking Kyoto.

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Verena Photographing Leaves at Murin'an
With this result

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KFC at Murin'an's Tearoom Floor

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Verena Intently Targeting Across the Lake
With this result

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Another Low Shot for KFC

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Verena at the Nanzen Temple
Just before taking this shot

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Under the Aqueduct

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Verena's Lunch Arrives

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Anthony Wasn't Too Hungry

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Kyoto

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Butterfly

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Aunt Jeannette in Kyoto
Jeannette Cancillieri

My Aunt Jeannette came to Kyoto this week with a tour group from The States. We're not related by blood, but by virtue of her having been friends with my folks since I was a kid. I don't think I'd met her since I was 10 or so, but I recognized her right away when I went to her hotel to touch base yesterday.

Anthony and I tagged along with her tour today. Anthony took to her easily, those friendly feelings perhaps eased along by the Fireman George gift she brought.

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Aunt Jeannette, Anthony, and Fireman George in the Bus

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Bustling Entrance to the Kiyomizu Temple

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Adjusting Anthony's Tour Name Tag

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Watching Me Snap a Self Portrait
(I'm wearing a yellow shirt)

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Anthony, Aunt Jeannette, and a Tour Guide Waving

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Same Steps As Above
They're now at the bottom, on the left.

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Heading Back to the Bus

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Outside the Sanjusangendo Temple
The building is old (741 years) and long (130 meters)

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Strolling in Gion
On the same little street featured in two cherry-blossom posts this spring.

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Enjoying Shamisen, Rice Crackers, and Tea
at a tea house in Gion.

I had a “snuggle chat” with Anthony this evening. Lately, when it's my turn to put him down for the night, we lie in bed with the lights off and chat. It's nice, because not having any toys to draw away his attention, he says more about his feelings and what he's thinking. This evening, he said (and I quote, word for word) in a warm voice “I enjoyed riding the bus and looking at old buildings with Aunt Jeannette today. I really enjoyed that.”

Upon hearing this, I'm not sure which reaction I felt more strongly, warmth due to the sentiment, or pride due to the perfect, adult grammar. It was a wonderful way to end a wonderful day.