KYOTO NOW:SOEI Patent & Law Firm

It’s been a month already since I arrived in my dream city, Kyoto.
I’d been told many times before coming here that in the Kansai area people stood on the right-hand side when using escalators, which is different from the Kanto area. And also, right before I came I saw the comedian Yuichi Kimura on TV telling a story about how he was standing on the left side of an escalator in Osaka and this old woman came up and poked him in the ribs with an umbrella saying “You stand on the right in Kansai!” So, I’d been thinking “When I move to Kyoto, I will definitely keep to the right!” I had set my mind to do as the Kansai people do when in Kansai.

But when I actually came here, I found that it wasn’t like that at all.
There are people standing on the right side according to the rule which I had thought to be unbreakable, but there are also people standing on the left side, as well. And there are absolutely no old women poking people who stand on the left in their ribs with an umbrella!

I had been looking forward to the stand-on-the-right-side-rule, so it was a bit of a shock to me. My colleagues told me later that in Osaka they are pretty strict about it, but in Kyoto, you’re basically meant to stand on the right but it’s all very flexible and mostly decided by whichever side the person at the front stands on.
I wonder if that’s the way it is because of the many tourists from abroad who visit Kyoto? But anyway, I will definitely visit Osaka some time and experience the “absolutely right!” rule.

And I also look forward to finding these small ‘differences’ again.