Weird food from Kyoto

Well, now that I finished a few more pages of my master's thesis, I can relax and tell you the tale of two weird foods from Kyoto: Yakisuzume and yakiayu.

Yaki- (焼き-) is the prefix for anything grilled, and if you connect that to suzume (雀) - sparrow - or ayu (鮎) - sweetfish - you get some weird looking food.

What especially disgusted me was my own realization that those cute birds that populated the Arashiyama Station I left to work from every morning could be so delicious...and so damn bony!

Anyway enjoy the following equation:

+焼き＝

Yikes. This delectable treat can be found a bit south of Kyoto in the Fushimi Area, home of one of the most beautiful shrines in Kyoto: Fushimi-Inari Jinja. Somehow this place ALWAYS gets passed over for a mediocre tour through Kiyomizu and Kinkakuji. For those of you that can't conceptualize the awesomeness of the 2-3 mile hike through the Fushimi-Inari Shrine (complete with $3 can cokes at the top), here are some good pictures:



The fox god of Fushimi loves two things: Inarizushi (rice with sweet agedofu) and expensive donations to the shrine - usually anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth depending on the location.



Notice each torii has the name of the company written on it.

The other scrumptious dish only comes in the June-August season. Yakiayu, or charcoaled sweetfish. If you've never eaten a fish like a hotdog, you gotta try it.



The interesting thing about ayu is the way they are fished. Some fisherman use the traditional bait and hook method, but the ass-biting method works better. Ayu are fiercely territorial and bite the ass (or fin) of any fish that comes in the area. Fishermen use a lure that looks like another ayu, and the fish bite the back of the lure and are thus hooked by their own instinctive territorial natures.



I would have fished in Katsura river too - if it wasn't for the 15000 yen ($150) species-specific fishing license.