To Kyoto

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Today we head to Kyoto.

As we wait for our taxi, a group of five school children approach me, and read to me from a very carefully prepared script. They tell me that they are from the Niko Junior High School English Club, and want to know if it would be alright if they asked me a few questions about Japanese music. I sense that this might be quite a short conversation. They show me some laminated pictures of what I assume are Japanese pop stars, and then ask me the second question on their script, which is whether I know who these people are. I tell them that I don’t. They giggle, which I think is more in disbelief than anything else. They tell me that these people are all very famous. I start to get the feeling that my interviewers suspect that I might have just jetted in here from Mars. They then ask me which musicians I like. I’m pretty sure that they won’t have heard of just about anyone on my list of all time favourite musical artists, but in the hope of trying to bridge the generational gulf that seems to be in place here, I choose what I think is a safe response, and tell them that I like the Beatles. I get blank looks from all but one of the girls, who tells me and her friends that she thinks that she might have heard of the Beatles. I suddenly feel very old. One of the children takes a photo of me with the rest of the group. They then give me a book that they’ve prepared on the highlights of Kanazawa, bow and thank me several times, and then disappear along the street in search of other English speaking tourists. I think that they might try and find someone a bit younger for their next interview.

The taxi arrives. It is from the KGT Corporation. We soon see that KGT aren’t the initials of the KGT Corporation’s chairman, but rather stand for Kanazawa Good Taxi.

The train feels very familiar. As usual the crew all turn around and bow to all the passengers whenever they get to the front of the carriage, and all the announcements are preceded by several bars of the type of canned music that I’ve heard played in movies which include scenes from American basketball games. It is very hazy and humid, and it’s hard to see much from the train. We pass very close to the very large Lake Biwa, but it’s so hazy that it’s hard to tell that it’s even a lake. Eventually we see the outline of a small boat and decide that it’s a bit unlikely that the boat is floating in thin air, so there must be a lake under it somewhere.

We check into our hotel, and Issy rests up while I go wandering in search of places for us to explore more fully tomorrow. Our hotel is in the Gion District, and the area immediately to the north of it is wall to wall temples set in traditional Japanese gardens. Some of the temples and shrines are Buddhist, and some are Shinto, but I get the impression that it’s all a bit fused together into one here in Japan. One of the smaller temples is surrounded entirely by statues of wild boar. We were warned to be careful not to get gored by dangerous wild boar when we were in a forest in Hakone a few days ago, so I'm not too sure why anyone would want to worship them. Even the statues of the boar look dangerous.

I walk on north into the apparently famous Hanamikoji Dori Street, which is jam packed with tourists. It is lined with traditional restaurants and shops, and we read that this becomes Kyoto party central later in the evening. There are lots of signs telling you what you‘re not allowed to do here, including eating, drinking, smoking, sitting on the ground, taking selfies, or touching the geishas. There are lots of people here in traditional Japanese dress. We read that some of them might be geishas, but it’s unlikely that you’ll see a geisha in the street during daylight hours because most of them will be off practising their craft, and otherwise getting ready for the evening’s performance. I’ve heard a lot about geishas but realise that I know virtually nothing about what they do. It seems that their primary role is to act as hostesses, and to entertain male clients mainly by performing traditional Japanese music or dance. Apprentice geishas are known as Maiko, or o-shaku which literally means "one who pours alcohol". Maikos in Kyoto typically start performing when they’re 15, and by 21 they’re considered too old to be anything other than fully fledged geishas.

I pass a hotel called the "Hotel Love Inn". I remember reading somewhere about these so-called love hotels. Apparently the walls of the rooms in a lot of the houses in Japan are very thin, and if a couple needs some privacy, they come to one of these hotels, where they can rent rooms for relatively short periods. At the Hotel Love Inn, basement rooms start at 5,000 Yen for the night, which is about sixty Australian dollars, but you can also rent them by the the hour or half hour. The half hour option costs 500 Yen, or about six Australian dollars. I suppose if a couple with a thin walled house wanted a romantic night away, then they would take the overnight option, although maybe not in the basement. If they wanted something which I’ve heard referred to as a "quickie", then I guess they’d take a room for an hour. I’m not quite sure what you’d call the half hour option, but I suspect that if you took that one you’d want to be sure that you weren’t wearing anything with buttons that were a bit hard to undo.

We head back out to Hanamikoji Dori Street for dinner at a traditional Japanese restaurant. It is raining when we finish, and we’re soaked by the time we get back to the hotel. I think again that we might be the only people in Japan who don't own an umbrella.

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