Downtown Kyoto is blessed with two lovely streets, one the alley cum geisha district called Pontocho, the other a wider actual street called Kiyamachi. The latter, which runs parallel and adjacent to Pontocho , is an actual street with one-way traffic and weeping cherries that droop gracefully over the Takase River: an old canal that was used to carry goods from Kyoto to Osaka.
Along with Shirakawa Dori, in Gion, Kiyamachi is one of the few streets in Kyoto that could be called beautiful. And until very recently it was an elegant place to go both day and night. In the past couple of years, however, fashion health spas and soaplands, pink salons and all-you-can-cum-in-thirty-minutes blow-job factories have spilled out of the narrow alleys that run between Kiyamachi and Kawaramachi Street β and have taken over many of what used to be bars and restaurants on Kiyamachi itself.
At least seven sex establishments now dot the east side of the street south of Shijo all the way up several hundred meters north of the Kiyamachi-Shijo intersection. Maybe you were going to the Maruzen book store β now closed. However, it has been reborn as a game center symptomatic of the decline of Kawaramachi into a playground for fourteen-year-olds. On this minute stretch, you had to to face a gauntlet of mini-sex establishments that were, however, confined to these small alleys.
How you were treated depended on the state of the economy. The middle-aged touts in white shirts and neckties standing in front of each brothel would ignore the foreign male economy is good or invite him in economy is bad. Eyes straight ahead, you pushed through until the lights of Kawaramachi returned.
Now those touts have come on to Kiyamachi, and the crowd on the street is predominantly male. And, at night, drunk. Now the street during the day is empty. At night it is a parade of men in twos or threes β and the occasional loner. Tours of Japan with Voyagin.
