I've touched on the history of Kyoto and Nara over the past month, so will not again bring up their past, except for one ideal look back at this region of Japan.  You can read  Eating as our ancestors did  from this weekend's issue of  The Japan Times , but I'll quickly summarize: Researchers are trying to learn what the country ate 1300 years ago, so are looking at the Nara period from 710-794. Nara is the easternmost site of the Silk Road, and to this area first came to Japan religion and rice in water culture. Essentially, then, there was rice, fish and vegetables.   But fish went bad quickly, so they dried it or added salt. The making of soup from dried fish flakes (usually bonito, a type of tuna) led to what became the notion of umami, the essence of deliciousness, for glutamic acid is found in the flesh/bones, which gets converted to monosodium glutamate, almost another term for umami. The sodium to preserve fish, however, no doubt led to all kinds of...

  We left Osaka  by train for Kyoto, 36 miles away. Saw some fall colors. Passed the Suntory Yamazaki Distillery. Kyoto Station is impressive. A shuttle bus comes from the Kyoto Westin Miyako twice an hour.  All hotels have at least one large Christmas tree. Check in went well.  Nice room.  Went to the Club Lounge to do my blog. Lot's of stuff to drink, but the food was only appetizers. Nice breakfast buffet. We debated going to Kiyomizu, where the Fall colors were almost past the peak.  However, this is a Saturday, and the advice was that there would just be too many people there.  So we instead caught the subway to walk up and down Shijo-dori, or Gion.  The internet here is very fast.  The next 24 photos took less than a minute and a half to download.  On some cruise ships, that would have taken all day. Kyoto Minamiza Theater. To Yasaka Shrine. Yasaka Shrine. Certainly our best viewing of Fall colors on this trip. Supposedly, Maikos a...