GACKT Official blog update. Translation below:

I quickly got onto the train to Kyoto.
I’m going there because I’ve been invited as a guest for the Kikkashou at Kyoto Racecourse which is happening on the next day though.

Upon arriving in Kyoto, I went for a meeting for another matter at the Four Seasons Hotel.
This being my first time at Kyoto’s Four Seasons, I was honestly surprised.
It’s uncommon for the interior to be done up so luxuriously.

I heard that the price of staying in this hotel starts from 300,000 yen a night but,
it was packed with foreign guests.
It’s wonderful.

Although the service industry makes up about 70% of Japan,
most of it don’t go well.
One of the problems that led to this,
stems from the average prices for dining overseas being cheaper than it is here.
A lunch that costs 800〜1000 yen is honestly weird.
A restaurant can’t operate decently at that price.
I think that large eatery chains that have been established as exploitative
generally have a fundamental issue to begin with,
in terms of having a bad balance in Japanese pricing and labour costs but…

Anyway,
after the meeting at Four Seasons concluded,
I went to 【すし岩 (Sushi Iwa)】, one of the restaurants I liked.
For the first time in a long while, I was meeting
GemCEREY’s President Nakano, who’s like an elder brother to me, for dinner.

As we haven’t met in a long while, we talked about a variety of things and
while we talked about work, conversations about anomalies in Japan’s
no, the world’s, monetary policies often came up as well.

With such unconventional monetary easing policies,
they’ve already printed more than 5 times the number of banknotes.
Exactly where is the credibility of paper money here?
I can already obviously see the world turning weirder
with such a huge country printing money freely like this.

I wonder if the general public understands that
the world is being driven into a state that has never been experienced before
Simply thinking about it is frightening…

Anyway,
the next day, I headed over to Kyoto Racecourse in the morning.
The weather was so rough that typhoon warnings were issued,
but the venue was filled with people.

It was the first time that I’m visiting Kyoto Racecourse, and it’s more sturdy than I expected.
In any case, it’s a large facility.

Then,
at the pre-event, I was to predict the winner of that day’s Kikkashou and
going straight to the point, my prediction for 1st place was impressively spot on.

Having never actually seen Japan’s races live before,
I was again surprised that we could watch at this vicinity.
This time,
the Kikkashou was being held at this Kyoto Racecourse.

Why is the Kikkashou so amazing to begin with?
Firstly, this race stretches over a distance of 3000m.

If we were to put it in a human’s equivalent,
it’s almost like running a whole marathon at full speed.

Next,
they go up and down at the same time in the middle of it.
Turning a corner while going down,
means that they have to keep their centrifugal force way out while riding.

If they simply racing with all their energy at the beginning,
the wind resistance tires the first horse and wears it out.
How they should work their way in the race
depends on the compatibility between the jockey’s control and the horse,
as well as the potential that the horse possesses.
And,
the fact that none of these horses have ever run this race before
makes things interesting.

Above all,
today, bad weather, that has rarely been seen in the history of this race, has arrived.
With abnormally strong winds from the typhoon, facing these winds will take up quite a lot of physical strength.
The horses racing behind will find dirt and mud flying back at them
that were kicked up by the horses in front.

No one could’ve foreseen this race.

Actually, when the race started,
despite that the audience all had their umbrellas up
I could see that they were all pretty excited.

In the heavy rain.
the enthusiasm doesn’t end at all.
Right before the race, as terribly strong winds blew,
the typhoon warning from the phones started sounding together.

These conditions are the worst.
Even so, they have to race.
The race starts and the horses fly out all at once.

I looks like they were a collective group of energy, frustrated with the rain as they ran.
Beautiful.

The ground rumbles with the galloping of the horses running before my eyes.
Until they made one round around the course, their positions did not change.

Just as they were making the final turn at the descending corner,
something happened all at once,
and all the horses were race side by side.
Amazing.

Then,
my prediction, Demuro who raced on a horse called Kiseki (Miracle),
rushed forward from behind.
It was extremely fast.
It looks as if he raced at a different dimension compared to the other horses.
I felt that just this one animal was different.
Absolutely stunning…

The word unintentionally fell from my lips.

Then, from the back, a second horse,
that I didn’t expect at all, closed the distance in the same way.

This second horse was one that nobody foresaw.
Splendid!

Kiseki being in first place was according to expectations but
because Clincher and Popocatépetl came in 2nd and 3rd,
the rate of the triple daily double jumped up.

Hmm,
this has far exceeded my expectations.
I completely lost

This time, I bought bets too but
since I intended for the triple daily double to be the main,
I made a loss on the whole.

Oh well, it can’t be helped.
Even so, it was an impressive result.
The final odds for the triple daily double was 1363 times.

Hmm,
I wanted to get that.
Looks like I have to follow my initial intuition after all.
Adding in extra information doesn’t work.

Maybe I should
visit a racecourse somewhere again.
To think that it’s this interesting.

Source: GACKT Blog

Translation: GACKT ITALIA Team

Translation © GACKT ITALIA