Saturday, May 27, 2006

Golden Week

With a shock I look at the latest date of my blog entry and the actually date, and I realize I have forget to update you on a number of things. First there is the notorious Golden Week, in which the whole of Japan decides to go somewhere or to return back to their birthplace (of that of their (grand) parents). This huge traffic leads to capacity rates of trains for which the Dutch National Railways would do a murder, such as the major JR line between Kyoto and Tokyo had a capacity rate of 160%.
Although Kyoto is reputed for being overtly crowded during Golden Week, due to a number of appointments I decided to stay in Kyoto. But to be honest, I didn`t go in to Kyoto so much during daytime. And no, I did not all of a sudden turn into a Hikikomori. I spend all my nights and mornings around the party area, which is basically 2 rows of streets, packed with bars, disco`s, pub`s, noodle places, snack places (for all those dutchies, these are not the places for the French fries but you can order a tidy bit to eat and pay an enormous amount for it, because the woman behind the counter, is there to talk with you and ease your tension), normal hostess bars and the likes. By daylight the area around Kiyamachi looks kind of rundown, with it`s advertisement for all the fun there is on offer during nighttime. The other area, formerly the second geisha district, called Pontochou, has remained much more of it`s history and looks like you would expect of a former geisha district. Both places lighten up after dark, with the neonlights turned on, and the host, all dressed in oversized suits, hair dyed blonde, and touped up in something which I coined the fluffy style, try to lure single ladies into an appointment. The lady equivalent of the hosts, the hostesses accompanying a severely drunk Japanese businessman as well as the older guys in fronts of the buildings, the Japanese mafia, patronizing the buildings they own, and they are the ones you inquire after certain hosts.
And while the nights were busy drinking and chatting, I also made use of the Golden Week, to visit an amusement park with friends, climb my first mountain (or probably it`s more a hill) and to visit Lake Biwa and a very nice castle town. But it was not all just play and fun, with a professor of a girl in my program we got an introduction to some of the history of Kyoto of which I had never heard of before. I knew that in Kyoto there had been an influx of Koreans, and that there were probably area`s where the so called burakumin ( a group of Japanese being discriminated, usually said because of their decent of people who did jobs considered dirty, such as butchery) lived. We concluded this very interesting day not in a bar, but in a really nice Korean restaurant.

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