Brainache

I spent my first night in Kyoto in the Kiyomizu Youth Hostel, which is an utterly charming, newly renovated hostel in a sort of mixed Japanese/Western style - tatami mats in the lobby and an ofuro to bathe in, but bunk beds in the rooms. The owner was charming, and the other guests were great, except for the Belgian dude who told me he'd recently had surgery to fix his terrible snoring, but that it hadn't worked very well.

I do my best to put up with a wide variety of people whose ideals and values may differ from mine, but I'm pretty sure you'd have to be dropped on your head more than the usual number of times as a child to grow up thinking it's okay to reserve a shared room with three strangers after an unsuccessful snorectomy.

I did the only intelligent thing, and hit the sack around nine to make sure I could reach a state of unconscious bliss before he went to sleep. Unfortunately, I vastly underestimated what I was dealing with.

To make a long story short, I spent the night on the floor of the lobby. I could still hear the guy's jackhammer-like labored breathing (the next morning, everyone at breakfast was talking about it, even people on the other end of the building), but it was distant enough to let me sleep.