From Nagoya we moved on to one of my favourite destinations of the trip, and possibly the one that I was most excited about: Kyoto. I was expecting a calmer pace of life than the other cities we’d visited, and lots of fun temples, and that’s basically what we got, though Kyoto is still a big city and thriving tourist spot, so it wasn’t entirely restful. It’s also quite a sprawling city, meaning that we spent a lot of time hustling between temples and, while there were plenty of vegan options, they weren’t always in our vicinity.
Organic House Salute was really close to our airbnb, so we headed straight there once we’d checked in. It wasn’t the most encouraging of places – it was small and dark, and a bit tricky to find. Also, we had to take off our shoes. How annoying!
Nevertheless, we persisted. The menu was quite small, and truthfully not that inspiring. Dr HH ordered the curry plate, which involved a nice but not mind-blowing vegetable curry, some very good coriander potatoes, and a sweet tofu side dish, along with rice and salad. The verdict was that it was solid but unremarkable.
I got the fish burger, which came with no accompaniments! The burger had a really good fishy taste, and the patty was pristine white inside – I’m really intrigued as to what it was made of. The toasted bun was great too. It was a good and fairly unusual burger, and I’m not sure I’ve had a fish burger before.
And out cake streak continued! Dr HH had this peach and cardamom cake, which was quite subtly flavoured.
I kept going with matcha, trying to make myself like it more. Again, the flavour was quite subtle, and just look at all that base! What fun!
Taking your shoes off in a restaurant: yay or nay?
Herbivores' Heaven 
On our last visit the only restaurant we had to take our shoes off for was in Kyoto, we put them in a little locker, in the restaurant you sat on the floor but there was a hole under the table for you to put your legs through! I don’t mind so much in restaurants but last time a lot of the historical sites required it as they had tatami mat flooring so walking around a museum in your socks is a bit strange, also it rained pretty much the whole two weeks last time so our feet were really cold too!
Yeah, we had to take our shoes off inside one of the castles we visited, but there was nowhere to leave them so we had to carry them around the whole castle with us. It was really weird!
I do not like wearing shoes, so it sounds like that might be nice, or very weird. What happens if you wear sandals? I feel like total barefeet would be very rude.
Dr HH wore flip flops, so he was always barefoot! I don’t think he minded so much. I hated it, and I was also always paranoid that someone would steal my shoes!
lol not a totally unheard of fear, I remember there being some Japanese or Korean movie/drama/something (I honestly can’t remember) where they stole someone’s shoes haha Though I am sure that would be pretty rare to happen.