The street has been restored to the glory of two hundred years previous, and aside from the style of dress and the excessive electrical lines above, one does get the feeling of being a wandering ronin (masterless samurai) looking to purchase a fine meal at a small inn and hopefully find a job that will allow him to stay a while longer in the city.
Along with the nearby Ninen-zaka (two year hill), the street is named after when the roads were laid out when the Imperial City of Kyoto was first built in and around the 8th century AD.
Both streets are laid out with old style wooden buildings featuring homes, traditional shops, tourist shops (of course) and restaurants.
In the photo above that I took in 1993 during Golden Week, you can tell that it had rained earlier that morning - what with the slick street and the washed out sky. Of course it rained. I am the Ame Otoko (Rain Man), and it always rains when I travel in Japan.
My traveling companion for this week-long trip was the foxy Trisha Pepper, who spoke Japanese fluently (thank god - a trip upon which I didn't get lost!!!), and she had red hair. Two out of three for me! Bigger boobs was the missing third.
I kid. I don't really care about boobs.
You were expecting a follow-up joke, weren't you? I can be serious sometimes.
Trisha was one of the smartest people I ever met in Japan (excluding maybe Kristine, Nobuko and Junko - a 4-way tie!). That statement will upset my buddy Matthew, so let me rephrase it to say the 'smartest woman'.
She also had a wicked sense of humor, that sadly was better than my own. No. I did not sleep with her. She had a boyfriend back home, and as far as I was concerned, she remained faithful. Damn right I would have slept with her if given half a chance. Crazy chick could hold her alcohol, too! You will meet Trisha soon enough.
For those of you who may not know, Kyoto translates to 'capital city' and was indeed once the imperial capital of Japan. Now with 1.5 million people, 1,000 temples and better weather now that I have left, Kyoto is the capital of the same-named prefecture.
By the way: Kyo-to... To-kyo... it was done for a reason...
Cheers,
Andrew Joseph
And yes... the photo belongs to Andrew Joseph. For non-commercial purposes, anyone may use it if you note that I am the photographer.
As you may have noticed, I completely changed the look of this blog. It looks slick, doesn't it. If you are having a difficult time navigating it, so am I. If it wasn't for me leaving my You Know What I Hate blog as it was, I would not be able to get into the damn blog to add new article - in fact... I wouldn't even be able to change it back to the old version (if I wanted to), because the buttons I have that allow me to do that are not showing up. I can still get around this and my other two blogs - How To Survive Women is also graced with a new look - but it ain't easy. Oh the suffering I do for my art!
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