Around Gion

Last weekend I took a trip to Kyoto, one of the two “must visit” cities in Japan. It’s the first time I’ve visited the city and it’s quite surprising just how utterly different it is in character compared to Kobe. Kobe really feel like a metropolitan city, there are foreign restaurants everywhere and everything feels shiny and new. I think the fact that they pracitically rebuilt the city from scratch after the ‘95 Hanshin – Awajii earthquake has something to do with it, but it’s another world away from sleepy Kyoto with its wide treenlined streets, clean rivers and temples every few blocks.

One district of Kyoto has been particularly carefully preserved, Gion, home of the Geishas. Wandering around the tiny clastrophoic streets, with the eerie sounds of the shamisen coming out closed second floor apartments and seeing Maiko (Geishas in training) shuffling home in their Kimonos is quite an experience. Definately worth the trip.

We stayed overnight in a Ryokan (Japanese Inn) and were leafing through my “Best of Kansai” guide-book when we spotted an entry for Yakuza watching:

As heart-stopping adventure sports go, yakuza-watching has to be on par with bungee jumping and lion-taming…

Funnily enough the Ryokan it mentioned it happened to have the same name as the one we were staying in, and was also in Kyoto. It also shared the same phone number. Oh. Right. No wonder there are so many large black cars with tinted windows and swathy men with perms wandering around. Oh, and apparently the building around the corner was the original headquarters of Nintendo. Cool!

Finally I think my favourite bit of Kyoto sleaze was the two Love hotels that faced each other; The Plexus and Hotel Sexus. It just needed a Nexus to be complete.