Day 25, in which we have our fill of tofu in a bedroom of eels

Today we wandered down to Nishiki-koji, a food market spanning six or seven blocks which has served as a fish and vegetable market since the seventeenth century, but is now home to stalls selling a wide range of products, including waving-cat-tea-cozies, baby-octopuses-on-a-stick and a thousand variations on the ubiquitous pickled radish.

A narrow passageway between a fish stall and a china stall led us into Hale, a traditional vegan restaurant in a machiya. Machiya apparently means 'bedroom of eels', on account of the fact they are extremely long and narrow buildings, divided up into a series of rooms for fiscal reasons (in ancient times, the shogun taxed you according to the width of your house). We slipped off our shoes and padded across the tatami mats to sit on the floor at our low table. Paul is 6'1” and didn't fit under the table, while I kept clumsily banging the sliding screen behind me, and it all felt like we were adults playing in a Wendy house.

We had gone to Hale in the hope of getting some more vegetables, but it turns out Japanese vegan restaurants simply replace all of the animal products with tofu and soya, rather than supplementing any vegetables into the dish. Our vegan meal-deal thus comprised: a big bowl of white rice, topped with thinly sliced tofu and soya cream (and – I counted – two kidney beans); a small side-dish of salted creamy tofu; a miniature plate of crunchy pickled vegetables; and a small side-dish of sliced cabbage and carrot, so finely chopped it seemed almost pre-digested. Green tea and chillies were served alongside.

We left feeling rather nauseous, tofu slopping around in our bellies. We strolled south through the city to Kyoto Station where – after a brief visit to the Tezuka Osamu studio to stock up on Astro Boy manga merchandise – we explored The Cube, a brave new architectural development in a city whose architecture otherwise falls into two camps: the traditional wood and the unthinking concrete. The Cube is a huge shopping centre built into the side of the railway station, into which is cut a vast and continuous staircase (and series of escalators, thank goodness) rising over twelve floors to a Sky Garden on the roof, from which one can see spectacular views across Kyoto to the mountains.

We took the tube out east to follow the Philosopher's Walk. Apparently in the nineteenth century some university professor used to walk along the canal each day, and so they've named the walk after him (not a widespread tradition, otherwise my grandfather's daily walk along the nearby A-road would by now be known as the Asbestos Manufacturer's Walk). It turned out to be a fairly pretty walk in the foothills of the eastern mountains, following a quiet canal through a peaceful part of suburbia. The far end led into a rather hectic street lined with tatty souvenir stalls, serving the tourists attracted to yet another temple (the Silver Pavilion), so we turned in the opposite direction and continued our walk back into town, passing through the city proper. Kyoto is not an attractive city, but it was interesting to get off the temple tourist track and stroll through these suburban streets to see how people live their lives – playing baseball, walking their children to the temple or just hanging out the washing.

We drank a bottle of wine at our local, Merry Island, and then headed out to find dinner. When we first arrived in Kyoto we spent ages trying to locate on our map a recommended Indian restaurant called Mughal, without success, but coming out of Merry Island today we discovered it was directly next door. A superb meal of samosa in chilli sauce, tandoori prawns laced with clove, boiled egg curry and sag paneer – all mopped up with a naan – saw us happy to bed, where the evening movie was Ms Elizabeth Taylor's classic flick, Cleopatra.