It’s 11:15 p.m., Sunday evening, and I’m waiting on laundry—the dryer in the hotel seems to be taking a long time with the small load of laundry that I hope will be the last I do before I reach Victoria next Saturday. What was I saying earlier about sitting still? While we were eating our Café M breakfast this morning the monsoon arrived and the heavens opened on a deluge that continued for about an hour. Comfortably tucked under an overhang at our outdoor table, we ordered a second coffee and settled to enjoy the splash and the scene—umbrellas of all colours bobbing and bouncing past, a couple in very fine clothes under a single umbrella, their backs soaking wet, a small girl in an elegant layered skirt and cowboy boots walking under the bubble of a transparent umbrella, cyclists insouciant under umbrellas, scooters with plastic windscreens and tops instead of umbrellas, people sauntering, running, skidding on wet pavement.
Taking the weather as a message to hunker down we came back to the hotel and I read about early Korean literature for an hour or more. Then, the rain slackening, we decided to visit The Museum of Kyoto, about three blocks away. The history and culture of Kyoto exhibit is interesting and well-displayed, though a little light on English signage, and we ended up going through the galleries backwards. (That's to say, from present day to reasonably deep past, not that we walked backwards.) I was particularly taken with the nyobo shozoku, women’s court dress of 12 layers—but careless with my note-taking, I didn’t write down the period when it was worn.
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