A night in Kyoto Having to type this hurriedly in the foyer of the Kyoto Hotel Okura. A night of terrible dreams with the constant theme of things getting out of control. Slugged about this morning till Hiroko prompted us to start our journey to Kyoto. She had been cooking in the night and we set off armed with a variety of edible delights for our journey. Drove to the shinkansen station sitting in the front next to Hiroko. She is a fascinating person, last night she showed me a copy of her book of essays called "I am the D51" which is the name of a railway engine and a reference in part to her travelling the world when she was in her twenties in the 1960s. Onto the shinkansen and rifled south through the eastern coastal plain. Looking out eastwards from the train there is flatness - heavily populated with scraps everywhere of agriculture. To the west there is a long line of pristine rain blurred mountains. Then through Nagoya, a big treeless, packed-looking city. Spent mos...