Kyoto's magic bars

No car parking facilities. Six stools. One bar. No bottle shop. Just a friendly little neighborhood bar in Kyoto.

It was 11pm when I found Taro's Cafe in a quiet back street of Kyoto.

Looking through the door, I saw that there was only the barmaid and one customer there.

"Umm.. are you open?" I asked in my shattered Japanese.

"Of course we're open," the barmaid sarcastically replied, "this is a bar."

So I stayed. Talking and drinking and drinking and talking until the owner came in.

And then I stayed some more. Talking and drinking and drinking and talking until the 1am closing time.

And then I stayed some more. Talking and drinking and drinking and talking with Taro, who owned the bar, and Natsuke, the graduate student who worked behind the bar, until 1.30am.

I could have stayed longer, but instead had a pleasant walk through the balmy Kyoto night to my bed beneath George Jetson's house.

It was supposed to be my last night in Kyoto...

It wasn't.

24 hours later, I would be back in Taro's cafe, talking and drinking and drinking and talking through the night that Michael Jackson died.

I would finally leave Taro's at 4.30am, as my drinking companion (who happened to be related to George W. Bush), had a conference in Tokyo later that morning.