Starbucks Uji, Kyoto – Coffee And A Beautiful Garden

Is it a problem that I don’t write my travel posts in a chronological order? Or in any order at all? I jump around between old and recent travel posts, in no particular order. I wish I had the discipline to order my posts using some kind of structure but I felt that would make it feel too much like ‘work’. What I post is really driven by which photos I am editing at that point in time – only if I like the photos that I have taken, then I am motivated to write a post around those photos.

I have always used Photobucket to host my photos which I link to this blog. Lately, I find Photobucket to be exceedingly slow in uploading photos and I have been thinking about using an alternative, preferably a site which has an awesome gallery visual and a great feel. (In NLP terms, I have both the Kinaesthetic and Visual representational systems) I came across SmugMug and gave it a trial run. I like their simple yet sleek templates and that the site uploads photos quickly.

Back to the post. In Feb this year, we travelled to Japan over the Chinese New Year period (boy, was the weather cold…!) stopping by in Kyoto first before Tokyo. We headed out to Uji to see the Byodoin Temple right after depositing our suitcases at Hotel Mume. It was our first visit to Uji after visiting Kyoto many times – not sure why it has taken us this long.

We stopped by Starbucks in Uji, located just outside Byodoin for a shot of caffeine. The Starbucks compound is beautiful – high slanted roof, mixture of wood, steel and glass, floor-to-ceiling glass windows that looked out into a lovely Japanese garden. I could sit there all day with a book.

I am going to try visiting all the Starbucks properties in Japan that are architecturally-interesting (ie not the standard ones you find in a mall or train station). I have seen three so far – Starbucks in Uji, the Dazaifu property in Fukuoka and the Ninenzaka property in Kyoto (which I will post soon!)

Next up will be Byodoin Temple.