A Day in Koyoto

Our day in Kyoto contained two main events.

Fire and Sweat.

The quest for a room in Kyoto was far less successful than it have been in other cities. After a long endless mess around we managed to get one of us into a hostel in Gion (The party district) and me and Steve resigned ourselves to staying in a nearby Internet Cafe.

Fire:

It is currently festival season in Japan.

This is one of the reasons why accommodation is such a stress to acquire.

Anyway this festival in Kyoto is really quite famous. The city is in a basin and on certain days of the year monks burn Japanese symbols into the mountainside. The most famous symbol, that for 'Great', was the one that we witnessed.

The streets were incredibly crowded and it was rather entertaining to watch a few lose policemen try and keep order. They have flashing light saber style batons that they wave indescriminatly and well as a rather liberal supply of megaphones. Either way controlling a crowd this big, even if they are Japanese was impossible. In the end we sat with our new French friend Alice in a park and drank for a bit.

It was all rather pleasant.

Sweat:

Staying in an internet cafe is a bizarre experience.

Japanese Internet cafes are essentially somewhere that people pay to either 'sleep' overnight or read comic books. You can book a computer, a booth, a booth with a reclining chair or some sort of bed contraption for an incremental increase in price.

To make it worth while me and Steve booked the booth for 2000Yen (about 13quid) . This had an upright chair, a computer a PS2 and other goodies. As a nights sleep it ranks as one of my worst in a long long time. I was a little drunk, which didn't help, but the idea of sitting upright in a chair for a bed is a little difficult. I slept on the floor for a while and this didn't agree with me. As a result I had a joyless period of about half an hour in toilets where my body engaged in a cold seat that poured off my body.

For the rest of the night I managed to snatch some sleep in the chair but this was something that I never really want to repeat.

Steve slept like a baby.