kyoto

I am in the splendid ryokan Motonago, sitting in the common desk trying to push buttons on this funny japanese keyboard. I just had an ofuro, and am still sweating like a squeezed sponge. in fact, this is what you do all day in this weather, it is really terrible, humid and hot.... it takes you away all forces and it is difficult to be motivated to do anything but sit in some place with air conditioning, be it a bar or a shopping place. The ryokan atmosphere is just great, it is like living in the past, in that “Geisha” movie. In fact, i went out for a very short walk in Gion after dinner, and spotted 2 or 3 nice young girls in complete geisha attire, and behavior. It was a sweet sight, to see the girls very tired, clearly intended to go home after a night of working in some ultrachic restaurant entertaining expensive customers, but still trying to keep their status.

A noisy american-english couple just entered the ryokan, with the blond woman chatting rumorously, and both clearly drunk! The owner, an old lady about 140 years old, is sending awful looks all around, she ould drill a hole in the wall!

Tonight in the ryokan a japanese woman in kimono served me the most fantastic kaiseki, the formal japanese dinner that you can have only at selected restaurant (quite intimidating places for the gaijin, foreigners - however, given the conditions of this blonde here, clearly foreigners do not find intimidating the itzakaya or the pubs). It was a 13-course meal! Of course, small courses, but in the end it was such a tourbillon, such a maelstrom, such a tsunami of flavors, smell, colour, changing plates and porcelain, that my eyes were even more amazed than the tongue :) travelling in ryokans is just a fantastic experience. I have my japanese style room, with gliding doors and windows, the kimono-dressed woman enters any minute to check if I need something, while absent she prepared my bedroom and left an origami paper heron on my pillow.