No, your other left

Kyoto is divided into districts called "ku", usually translated as "ward". So, in addition to having a city hall, there are ward offices, which is where we go to handle national health insurance matters and get my gaijin license renewed. My ku is "Sakyo-ku", with the "Sa" part of the name meaning "left", as in your left hand, and "left ward" in combination. The funny thing is, look at a map and I'm all the way on the extreme right (east) side of the city, right up against the mountains. There is an Ukyo-ku meaning "right ward", and you can guess where that is, over there on the left. (Hi, Trent, you reading this over on the west side?) So, what does it mean? In fact, the names were assigned based on the view from the Imperial Palace, which *was* in the extreme north (the city has grown a bit in the last 1200 years), and faced south, so left was right and right was left, and it still is. It's all relative to your point of view, as with sooo many things. and yes, Kyoto follows the worldwide tradition of having it's seedier neighborhoods in the south.