In this season, I like to prepare some Japanese sweets for 3:00 p.m. rather than cakes. Many of them are made of "mochi" -- steamed sticky rice balls with various stuffings. Here you can see in the pic are;

Dango - tri-colored ball sticks. No stuffings. Sakura and green tea flavored.

Sakura mochi - pink mochi with red bean stuffing and wrapped with salted leaf.

These sweets are sakura scented and often taken for tea times as well as cherry blossom view picnic.…

Today I visited Ryoanji temple, famous for Zen-spiritual rock garden. But what I saw and got more interested in than the garden was...KIMONO fever among western tourists!

In Kyoto there are many vegetables not so common in other areas in Japan. Today I had a nice lunch at a restaurant which serves such Kyoto veggies.

My favorite was various kind of radish; white, red, orange, green...were sliced thinly and topped with Kyoto veggie dressing. I tried Kamo-leak green sauce.

Not only salad, all meals here involves fresh vegetable in…

Osaka station. Beautiful outlook.