day 144, kyoto

As Jason left early this morning was planning on having a relatively quiet day and I achieved it which was fabulous day. They were having this festival thing which was more a parade marching through the streets, around 2000 people in traditional dress going back 1000 years in chronological order, both men and women dressed in everyday gear and warriors and geishas etc. it was really interesting to see them go through  though after 2 hours of standing still I got a bit cold so went ‘upstream’ a bit to where the parade had started from, the imperial palace gardens, and had a walk around there which was amazing, beautiful trees and landscapes with wide gravel paths, no-one really about and it was brilliant. I wandered round aimlessly, read more of shantaram, stumbled upon a softball court where they had 5 matches playing and was really good to see, then a tennis court and watched a coaching session, where the standard was pretty damn high. I went in search of a bar and ended up at a sports bar with a massive projector and couches, sat down with a Swedish bloke called Per to watch the rugby and got half a pint in (a full pint was 900yen) and thoroughly enjoyed the rugby, was a great spectacle, and started out a neutral I ended up routing for the French and thought the last 5 mins were a bit anti climatic. Went back to the hostel to see when the city united game kicked off, met an English bloke called mark who’s been travelling for 11 months and is doing almost my trip in reverse which is cool, so set off with him to get some food and watch the football at a pub, enjoyed the game immensely, treated myself to  a whole pint then fought the temptation to watch the qpr Chelsea game and went back to me hostel and thought I’d skype a few people, had a great hour and half then bed