A Local Morning at Nishiki

The Nishiki I love best is the one at eight in the morning.

At that hour the market belongs to the people who run it. The shops run by Kyoto locals are in the middle of their prep. At the fishmonger's, the morning's fish from Kyoto's central market is being broken down — filleted, portioned, boxed to order. Sometimes someone from a kaiseki restaurant they've supplied for years stops by to collect what was set aside. A few doors down, the prepared-food shop is cooking the day's side dishes. At the tamagoyaki stand, the dashimaki is being rolled right there in front of you, pan after pan.

What I love is the sound of all this — the breath and rhythm of people at work — and the smell of ingredients being readied for the day. It's a good smell, the kind you only catch before the market fills up.

I like to walk slowly through it, and then stop at Nishiki Tenmangu at the end of the street. I put my hands together and say a small thank you: yesterday was a good day; may today be a happy one too; may my family be well. That, to me, is a morning at Nishiki.

The shops that open later for visitors are still behind their shutters at this hour. Only the ones run by locals are up and moving. That's exactly why it's my favorite time — you're seeing the market the way the neighborhood knows it, before the day turns to face the crowds.

It's a quiet thing, and easy to miss if you don't know to slow down for it. By the time my tours begin, at ten, the shutters are up and the lanes are full again — that early stillness is gone for the day. But the shops are the same. I take guests to the ones run by Kyoto locals, the stalls the neighborhood actually buys from — not the ones set up for souvenirs — the people I said good morning to a couple of hours earlier.

If that's the Nishiki you'd like to see, that's what my Nishiki Market Walk is for.