Fat Burning Commutes 2

Here is the character for Kyoto Bio-diesel (see Fat Burning Commutes below).



The new goal for the city is to have buses that run on 100% tempura oil in a few years. I wonder if the Kyoto appetite for fried food will keep up with it?

Ritsumeikan School

In late February we went to Uji. Usually one goes to Uji to go to the famous Byodoin (on the ten yen coin), commune with the Uji chapters of The Tale of Genji, or drink green tea which is grown here. But we went to participate in a free ceramics making class with some other students in my program. Sam got to make a creation, and it will be fired and sent back to us. This took place at the Ritsumeikan middle and high school. Ritsumeikan is a prestigious private university in Kyoto, and like many such schools they have feeder private primary and secondary schools. There being nothing else around the area, we went to the school cafeteria for lunch, and it wasn't bad. Sam said he wanted to have his photo taken with some young women who turned out to be the baton twirling team. When we approached them he fled, but Maia was willing to have her photo with them, though she seems to be viewing them suspiciously.


Chris continued his tantanmen trials, Sam had udon as usual, and I had some fried chicken. Maia nibbled on all. It was not bad for the price.








Sam's creation was pretty impressive. No pedestrian bowls or cups for him! He got quite focused on this, and kept his lucky pumpkin hat on throughout.




While I assisted with the clay, Chris walked amongst the baton twirlers stretching with Maia until she fell asleep.



On the way back we looked for a coffee shop with cake, avoiding the Mister Donuts where Chris had a "honey glazed" donut that tasted more like butter rum and stale oil. Yuck. We walked a long ways down to a low-end mall that had a coffee shop (pretty yummy cake) within a supermarket. Their meat turned out to be very cheap compared to our central Kyoto area market, so we bought some beef and Chris made burgers for Sam. You can read about the elusive hamburger (not hambaagu) at Chris eats Kyoto One Delicious Year: Not Quite Like Home.

Fat burning commutes

Our house, each childcare facility, and workplace are each in different areas, so we have tried lots of methods of transportation. In our circumstances a local would definitely use a bicycle with two children's seats attached. (A few would use a car, especially on rainy days. We don't have a car or want to drive here). Kids would probably wear helmets but not the parents. Adults sometimes wear helmets for sporty bicycle use, but use with the usual "Mama Chari" like I have it is pretty rare. When I happened to ride by the City Hall when there was a cameraman taking footage of the bike lanes on the side walk, the director spotted me coming and I heard him say "get a shot of that foreigner with the helmet!" Not only do I fear for my own head, I definitely do not feel confident enough to carry my kids, helmet or no. I know it's probably safer than when we drive in the US, but I've seen too many people tip over their bikes that are off balance with the weight of children. For a short period it was illegal to carry two children on a bike, but it was revoked; it was just too difficult for many parents to get their children to preschool.

Luckily I have found that I can park my bike and ride it to school after dropping off the kids. Most of this ride is away from cars and is an amazing birdwatching experience along the river.



Not to mention pretty good exercise.

When we are with the kids our most common choice has been the bus. Maia recognizes the icon that gives us preferential seating:




Some locals get irritated by the buses, mostly because they can suddenly become very crowded with tourists in certain seasons or the day of some event on that route. And there is usually at least one major tourist destination on every route. But from my perspective it is pretty amazing that the buses almost always arrive on the minute for which they are scheduled and move along the routes quickly (and they don't wait for people running for the bus). A pretty neat thing about Kyoto buses is that 20% of their fuel is recycled frying oil! Kyoto has embraced its role in in the Kyoto Accords and tried to make "Eco" both a buzz word and reality. Under one initiative, they started urging the collecting of frying oil from restaurants and individual homes around the city which is then processed and added to the bus fuel. This program has been used since 2000, and Kyoto City created their own standards to regulate the fuel content. Http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/025875.html

It being Japan there is of course special mascot figure for this program.

Unfortunately the national transportation bureaucracy just came up with its own diesel standards which do not allow for such a high cooking oil content, meaning the buses are now only 5% tempura oil fueled instead of 20%. People are worried that this will get people out of the habit of collecting the oil -- it's not exactly easy to get your used oil into a can and lug it to a collection point. Deep frying is a really popular cooking method here, though we don't use it much at home. Still we often partake of the amazing fried chicken (kara age) at a nearby low-end restaurant, with hopes that we can make up for it with other healthy eating and exercise.

This leads to the other commuting method - walking. Really you can walk anywhere in central Kyoto in under and hour. My cell phone has a pedometer, and I find that even when using trains and buses, I end up walking over 10,000 steps a day. I don't know how far that is, but it sounds impressive! Because of all the walking and shrinking hips that result, my pant cuffs are all wearing out.

Maia and Sam love to eat and can get away with it. Here's Sam topping off a huge meal of carbonara and meat covered pizza (at LEAST one adult serving combined) with a four scoop bowl of gelatto!



And Maia always eats with some food in each hand, and maybe some on her nose.