Kyoto BEEF Explained 😂

One of the most hilarious books I’ve read in my life is this. It was written by Professor Inoue Shoichi. He is the Director of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies which is located in Kyoto. And his book is entitled 京都ぎらい = I Hate Kyoto.

When it was first published, there were reviews from readers especially in Osaka who basically gave a standing ovation 😂.

The book starts with his confession of being bullied by central Kyoto people for being born outside the central Kyoto area.

An example he gave was, when he was in grad school he visited a centuries-old architecture in central Kyoto to do some research. A resident there heard his Kyoto dialect and asked him where he was from. Young Shoichi answered that he was from Saga, west of central Kyoto.

Then the resident was like, “Ahhh Saga. How nostalgic. When I was little, a farmer from Saga used to come collect our doody poop. Mmm, yes.”

Household excrements used to be given out to nearby farms as fertilizers until the mid 20th century. So it was as if he needed to make sure this boy, a bumpkin in his eyes, understood that he may speak just like Kyoto residents and he was from a place that is geographically considered a part of Kyoto, but that’s not real Kyoto 😫.

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▶︎ Hi, I’m Kyota, the author of Amazon Best Sellers [Folk Tales of Japan], [Underdogs of Japanese History], and [Horror Tales of Japan].

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