Dispatches from the bench.

The desk has opened the Library — a standing collection of reference compositions kept in chronological order. The first edition is Kyoto in Seven Days, Vegetarian. Five further editions are in preparation; their titles are listed in the contents.

A reference composition is not a plan for a particular traveller. It is an exemplar — the form a plan takes when the desk composes it without a body attached to it. Readers who find a composition close to their own intent can adapt it into a plan composed for them.

We noticed, reading three Kyoto plans in a row, that the desk was suggesting Weekenders, % Arabica, and Kurasu within the same morning. A plan with three coffee stops in three hours is a plan with two coffee stops too many.

The composition has been adjusted: where two coffee stops occur in a single half-day, the second is now removed unless it sits more than 1.4 kilometres from the first. The traveller's morning is calmer for it.

The sleeping mascot now appears between the local hours of 23:00 and 06:00, following the traveller's timezone — not the server's. A small thing, but the desk would rather not have its mascot in his nightcap while the traveller is at lunch.