Kyoto is a quietly frustrating city. In one sense, it follows a similar pattern to London. The river is discarded as a center of commercial and urban life, becoming a small sancturary within the wider raucousness of the city.
I am staying at the Kyoto Royal Spa, a stone`s throw away from Panchoco (?), the tourist center. Here, the bars advertise on the streets and are often located on any floor up to the 8th. Most of them are empty, leading to a merry chase from building to building in pursuit of a decent public house.
The local ex-pats, predominantly Americans, have their own watering holes. We found the preferred British/Commonwealth place, a unassuming room with Yebisu (once drunk, never touched!), so malty it is maltless, backlit by candles in a homely way. I was astonished by an Australian from Perth who proudly announced "I am a doer, not a watcher" on the grounds that he didn`t watch sports. And only because I raised the Ashes. I was slightly unnerved by this Australian pomposity, as they are one of the few nations who have the records to back up their boasts.
Japan is so different it is enjoyable. Yet, sometimes one can be taken aback by finds. Buying some gifts in a shop that sold everything from fans to samurai swords, presumably fakes, my eye caught an intricate letter opener with a handle carved with a 1928 Ford in relief. All well and good. Then my eyes strayed to its neighbours: Adolf Hitler and the Waffen SS. From my perspective, they were probably collector`s items for the Japanese, all political connotations submerged by distance, language and time.
Give it another century, and that will be his fate in Europe: a chequered memory decorating militaria and bookshelves, as history erodes his reach and carves out his figure in neutered bas-relief, as distant as Napoleon or Louis Quatorze.
That is the end of my ruminations for now.