Our intrepid man in Kyoto brings us today's second (and last) Japanese story.

From the April edition of Jitsuwa Knuckles (Man, Japan is weird.):

A strange and spooky evening in Kyoto


The Higayashiama-ku district of Kyoto is said to boast three well known spots believed to be haunted, reports Jitsuwa Knuckles (April). One is a "love hotel," formerly named Ondine, located adjacent to the Yasui Konpira-gu, a Shinto shrine where, tradition has it, Japanese went for the purpose of "en-kiri" (non-judicial divorce).

Back in February 1997, the body of a female singer was discovered in one of the hotel's rooms, a full week after she was strangled to death. Her murderer, it seems, concealed her corpse by pulling out the mattress from the bed frame, lowering her body inside the frame, and then replacing the mattress. As was reported in the March 20, 1997 issue of weekly magazine Shukan Jitsuwa, the room was subsequently rented out to at least a dozen couples, who made use of the bed without taking any notice that a woman was reposing beneath it. Eventually the corpse began to bloat and stink; a horrified maid eventually found the body and called the cops.

Police believe the woman, who appeared to have been in desperate financial straits, had taken up prostitution to supplement her income. Her murder remains unsolved.

Understandably reluctant for this kind of publicity, the hotel subsequently changed its name, but is still very much in business.

The shrine located next door to the hotel also provides some interesting insights into the war between the sexes. It is festooned with "ema" (votive tablets) upon which angry women have scrawled messages such as "I pray that XXX (man's name) drops dead" or "Make him leave that b***h quickly and come back to me."

Convenient but ineffective.

Another somewhat creepy Higashiyama-ku attraction featured in this Jitsuwa Knuckles' "Deep Walker" installment is "a bell to summon the dead." Located in an area known as the "Rokudo-no-tsuji" meaning "the intersection of the six realms of rebirth." Here, worshippers ring the temple bell over the four days of the midsummer Bon Festival to call their ancestors back to the world.

Ha! I'd rather be in Philadelphia.

Also nearby is the site of the former "Belle Ami," a nightclub where Kazuo Taoka, "godfather" of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest criminal syndicate, was gunned down and seriously wounded by an assailant from a smaller rival gang on July 11, 1978. The famous club remained open for another eight years, but eventually closed, becoming a Japanese noodle restaurant until the manager committed suicide. It is now a Korean-style barbecue restaurant.

Huh? When my idiot Italian criminal cousins gun somebody down, he stays gunned down. Permanently.

Seriously wounded, indeed.

Kyoto, apparently, lives more in its past than in the present. This situation certainly holds true for the "Gojo Rakuen," a quiet neighborhood of venerable "chaya" (tea houses) along a river that used to serve at the town's licensed brothel quarters.

In a somewhat clandestine manner, so to speak, these chaya are still in business.

Entering one, Jitsuwa Knuckles' reporter was escorted to a room on the second floor by an elderly proprietress.

"It'll warm up in a jiffy," the old lady tells him, turning on the room's kerosene space heater. The room, unfortunately, was not only old, but distastefully unkempt. The reporter spots clumps of dirt that had accumulated in the four corners of the room, and on the space where a flower arrangement was usually placed. Spotting the exoskeleton of a dead cockroach on the floor, he makes an expression of disgust. "How am I supposed to get in the mood for a woman in a dump like this?" he asks himself.

This concern is momentarily alleviated when an attractive young woman clad in a black, one-piece frock, who introduces herself as Aki, enters the room.

Explaining that this is his first visit to Gojo Rakuen, the reporter enquires to Aki if the other chaya in the neighborhood are in a similarly decrepit state. Yes, they are, she tells him matter of factly. She adds that she herself is not a native of Kyoto, but hails from nearby Osaka. She plies her trade at Gojo Rakuen because, she admits, her activities are less likely to be discovered by a chance encounter with someone she knows.

Perhaps it was the filthy room, or the cold, or the disappointment that Kyoto was failing so miserably to meet his expectations as an elegant, refined town where a good time is to be had; but the "service" was performed perfunctorily, indifferently and ended all too soon.

As opposed to the good ol' USA, where the reporters are the whores.

Aki politely turned down the reporter's friendly invitation to join him for a meal afterwards. "I've got to take the train straight back home," she explains. "There are some weird people hanging out around here, like stalkers, y'know? It's scary."

And that was that. The reporter's brief encounter with Aki in the filthy room at the chaya cost him 20,000 yen, all inclusive.

As far as night life is concerned, Kyoto, the magazine concludes, lives on the memories of its former glory but little else.