This is what I had for breakfast.  It's thick toast spread with cinnamon and honey and with two dods of cream, one whipped and one ice, on top.  Pretty good start to the day.  Certainly better than the previous day's start.

I'd set out with a tourist spot in mind for the morning because the festival phase two wouldn't start till 1pm.  When I got to the subway the platform was full and as the train pulled in I could see it was chocka, so a sardine squash looked inevitable.  Behind me a train arrived going in the opposite direction with very few people in it and not many waiting to board so I got on that one instead.  I'd no idea if it went anywhere interesting so I got out after a couple of stops and found myself nowhere in particular.

It would be harsh to call it an urban wasteland but it was tending that way.  With no cafes around I bought some breakfast material in a convenience store and balanced myself on a metal barrier in the carpark to eat it.  A pastry and some chunks of pineapple went down nicely.  The cold drink I'd thought was lemon was in fact grapefruit juice.  In contrast to the beauty of many Japanese products much of their advertising matter is very far on the wrong side of the less is more equation.  Drinks bottles being a case in point, covered in slogans and verbiage in multiple scripts and fonts I tend to rely on the picture and this one seemed to me to be a lemon but it was a グレープフルーツ (gure-pufuru-tsu).

Grapefruit juice was always my favourite amongst the fruit juices but for the years I have not drunk it.  That's because reading closely the warning leaflet that accompanies one of the life saving drugs I take (I assume they are life saving otherwise there's not much point) I came across the injunction "avoid grapefruit juice".

Until yesterday I've done so, but reluctantly.  Has that lovely bottle of it done me irreparable harm I wonder or could I indulge again without exploding or melting away?

I wandered about rather aimlessly and came across a spot that would have been nicer to breakfast in than a carpark.  By the side of a semi-dried up river bed between an urban motorway and multi-storey monsters were some lovely bushes and flowers.

As the morning wore on I went back to my starting point and underwent the sardine experience but in a bus not a tube and got to the Nishijin Textile Center (sic) where things were due to kick off at 1pm.  This was only a couple of hundred yards away from the shrine up an extremely busy main road.  Half a dozen horses stood placidly ignoring the traffic.

Spectators and participants gathered and it was all very jolly but a bit of a muddle.

Then whistles blew and the sound of fife and drum could be heard coming from a side street away from the groups I'd been beside.  I couldn't even see that lot at first but then I located them and got some pictures.

My lot (as it were) got themsleves in order and moved off down the road with me in pursuit.  Now as I said this was no distance from the shrine and the publicity said that that's where the event would finish at 5pm.  They'd have to march very slowly then.  Well they went past the shrine and after a while I heard music from a few streets away and realised that the leading groups were coming back a different way.  I successfully guessed their return route, nipped over to it and got some more shots. 

Amidst all this jollity back at the shrine some worship was going on,

Shinto like Hinduism has a lot of gods and it seems has space for tree hugging adherents.

I realised they were going to march around various streets in the neighbourhood till 5pm so I left them to it and a little way down the road came upon the source of the horses.

There was a kabuki show on in Gion later in the afternoon and I really swithered about going.  On the one hand I wanted to see it but on the other I wasn't sure that I was up to watching three hours of extravagantly costumed actors prancing about energetically shouting at one another, waving swords and posturing without my having much idea what was going on so I decided to just keep walking.

Well I came across a castle so I went in, at least into the grounds.  There was one building referred to as the palace that you could go into but it looked awfully crowded.  The entry gate and the grounds were brilliant though.

 

This rock garden was particularly intriguing since you'll see from the picture below that the rocks appear each to have a name.  To be investigated. 

I went back to the hotel after that and apart from visiting the 24hour laundrette across the road did no more.  Now I'm in Nagoya and we'll see what the morrow brings.