Japanese Cooking in a Central Kyoto Kitchen Studio with Optional Nichiki Market Tour - Day Trip

Traveling Spoon

Midori has been cooking and researching Japanese and South East Asian cuisine for over three decades and is a wealth of knowledge on Japanese cuisine. She grew up in Akashi city where she learned traditional Japanese cooking from her grandmother. In 1995, Midori decided she wanted to share her cooking skills with others and started teaching cooking classes in Kyoto. Her centrally-located cooking studio is a 'machiya', a traditional wooden townhouse found throughout Japan. Here she teaches Japanese locals about South East Asian food, and international travelers about homemade Japanese food. Midori believes sharing her passion for food is a wonderful way to connect with people and their culture! Midori will welcome guests with Japanese smoked tea and wagashi, traditional confections typically eaten with tea. She will then introduce travelers to traditional Japanese ingredients used in Japanese home cooking, such as soy sauce, mirin, sake, and miso. Then travelers will enjoy a cooking demonstration (please note this is not a hands-on class) where Midori will prepare one of three possible menus. Menu choices include: Set 1) Teriyaki Chicken Menu (teriyaki chicken, two seasonal vegetable sides, miso soup, rice), Set 2) Maki Sushi Menu (maki sushi, tamago yaki, one seasonal vegetable side, miso soup) or Set 3) Kansai Street Food Menu (okonomiyaki, takoyaki, yaki gyoza, miso soup). Midori also offers an optional market tour add-on of Kyoto's four-hundred-year-old Nishiki Market, is one of Japan's most iconic markets. Please note that the market tour takes place after the cooking demonstration; the market is about a six-minute walk from Midori's cooking studio. Midori offers Halal, Kosher and Vegan Meals as well, so please inform Traveling Spoon if you have any special dietary restrictions.

Vacation Inclusions

• Cooking Class
• Market Tour (optional)
• Lunch (11am-2pm Cooking Lesson or 10:30am-2:30pm Market Tour) OR Dinner (4:30-7:30pm Cooking Lesson or 4:30-8:30pm Market Tour)

Featured Destinations

Kyoto Kyoto If you can visit only one city in Japan, Kyoto is the one. This ancient city, 30 mi/50 km northeast of Osaka, was the capital of Japan for more than 1,000 years and still is considered the country's spiritual capital. Thousands of shrines and temples dot the city, including more than a dozen on the UNESCO World Heritage list. That list is far from all-inclusive, and many excellent places that might be the star attractions of other cities crowd the streets of Kyoto. It is a center of Japanese Zen and has several huge monastery complexes where serious students still sit in meditation. Kyoto is also the nation's capital of traditional arts. Whether your interest be in pottery, textiles, dance, the tea ceremony or any of the other innumerable arts, Kyoto has excellent galleries, museums, shops and tea houses. Japanese people from the countryside and foreign students flock there to learn under the great masters. Much of what is considered Japanese haute cuisine was developed there too, as an offshoot of the tea ceremony. Kyoto is Japan's heartland of history. With 1,300 years of tumultuous existence, the city's past intrudes upon the present day as in few other Japanese cities. In Gion, you can spot a geisha (or geiko, as they are called in Kyoto), one of the last hundred or so in Japan, slipping down a side-street to entertain rich guests with witty conversation, dance or music. A shopping arcade may suddenly fill with discordant clanging music as a shrine festival passes among the shoppers, or you may hear the long chant as Zen monks pass through the neighborhood, calling for alms. Kyoto is an understated city that might disappoint visitors at first (at first glance, it is a large city with modern buildings that might not align with one's original perception); its charm lies in small details, pocket gardens, tiny traditional restaurants and refined artwork.

Destination Guide

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