Tempura Unlike Any Other

Today we left Seattle to fly to our first destination: Japan. As we are a big group, we fill up an entire plane.

Pretty soon, we were off the ground, enjoying our company. 

We had to stop to refuel in Anchorage, and I wish we had been there longer. It's been a long time since I have been there and after a short stop there, I want to go back again. I took this picture from the plane when we landed. 

After only 3 hours on the plane, I made some pilot friends and got to hang out in the cockpit too! 

After what felt like ages, we landed in Osaka, Japan. From there, we had an hour and a half bus ride to Kyoto, where we are staying. Since there's no airport here, Osaka is the closest city with an airport.

Even though we are so exhausted and jet lagged, we made reservations for a tempura bar in our hotel and after eating there I'll never eat tempura in LA again. 

Here are just a few pictures from our meal... 

Below is the setting-up stage of the tempura making. 

This was a scallop and assorted fish appetizer. 

Here's another picture of the food before it was fried in tempura batter but here you can see the different salts that are paired with each food (we also had tempura dipping sauce and lemon juice). 

This was a sashimi appetizer. 

And I even ate shrimp heads (shocker).

That's not even half the food, and it was all so pretty to take pictures of, but I won't spam this with food pictures! We have a big day of sightseeing and shopping tomorrow so it's time to get some zzz's!