holy shit. i mean... holy fucking shit.

before tonight, i've fainted once in my entire life. that was my 10th grade biology class, while my bio teacher was "helping" me with the rib separation of a fetal pig dissection. the initial incision was fine, it felt like i was cutting play-doh. but when she had to come help me separate the ribs.... i felt dizzy and had to go to the window. i was humiliated in front of my entire class.

tonight, there were no snickering witnesses. tonight was scarier because i was alone. scarier because i'd managed to stumble upon a grisly depiction of an unspeakable practice inflicted upon women around the world, by far the most graphic i've ever read. "oh my god. oh my godohmyfuckinggod...." why couldn't i just stop reading? why wouldn't my retinas just stop processing such information?

but then they did. the vertigo set in. the phantom bile rose in my stomach, the image of the fetal pig with its swollen shut eyes flashing through my head as i made my way to the toilet.

in retrospect, that quick and decisive move to the toilet was the worst thing i could have done, because the next thing i knew my left eye was staring up at ecru porcelain while the right observed the cracks and grooves of the red formica bathroom floor of a place i had NO FUCKING CLUE where it was. it took me maybe 40 seconds to realise that it was my apartment, the place i've been living for almost a year and a half.

i stood up again, slowly... and promptly fell back to the ground.

i called the manager of my school in a groggy state and breathlessly told her about my fainting spell. she's extremely concerned that i might have fainted without any discernable cause, a sign of some serious underlying medical condition... but the reality is i know exactly what set it off. it's just too horrible to relay or explain. even in blog form, at the moment i fear that relaying what i'd read about tonight might send me into unconsciousness again.

i'm tired. so tired. physically and psychologically exhausted, but i can't go to sleep because i'm afraid of the imagery of what i'd read haunting my dreams and sending me into some kind of... i don't know, coma or something; i mean coma seems to be the only place you can faint to when you're already unconscious. and that fear, that deprivation of a normal human need for fear of self-inflicted psychological terror makes me cry. i've been downing water since the episode, thinking maybe dehydration has something to do with it (i went running today and then didn't have much to eat or drink, at least after the pancakes at Chieko's house and then the few pieces of sushi at maybe 4:30) and it's as if my body now has enough water to produce the tears over this awful thing.

i want to talk to someone. holy shit this is freaking me out now. not the health implications but what initially set off my fainting. but i can't, the images haunt me. maybe i'm supposed to work against this sort of thing, maybe that's like my purpose in life or something but... how can i address something that sends me into a coma?

omens

i actually managed to drag my ass out of bed when my alarm went off at 9am for second day in a row, the rising sun of Nihon shining in my face. i put on my running clothes and heard an odd sound outside like a bamboo stick full of beans.

it was rain. a passing cumulonimbus was raining down in a freak sun shower. it made me think of Charlie Brown, how everything sort of rained on his little pocket of the world and how he'd feel sorry for himself about it... but i just sort of marvelled at it, thankful that i was actually awake to see it. i thought it was omenaic (omenaic, is that a word?) of something good to come. after watching the raindrops decline to the size of little fibreglass shards reflecting the white of the sun i went out for my run, through which i felt mostly alive for a change, even up that damn incline going to the park. ahhhh.... after the stagnation and overall ICK of last week kicked off by the consumption of a sunday night bottle of wine, maybe today would be a good day.

i was drying my hair when my phone rang. it was Yumi, from work.

"Chris-chan! it's Yumi. Manager wants you to give a model lesson at 1:30, so don't leave the school after you clock in."
"Um..." you'vegottabefuckingkiddingme " ok, what's her level?"
"I don't know, Yuri will give you details when you get in."

FUCK. i hate model lessons with a fiery passion as it is, let alone when i don't even know the student's damn speaking level. Tuesdays are supposed to be my easy day, and now i have to give a model lesson to some assclown businessman who can't get over himself enough to actually learn something from me, and then blame my manager for my poor teaching skills. shit shit shit.... so much for good omens.

but this visitor was nothing like i'd had in mind. Rieko came in at 1:30 on schedule. I said hello and gave my half-bow and half-nod. it was difficult to tell her age; like many Japanese women she could have been 19 years old or 35, and she was dressed in simple cargo pants and a blue hoodie.

the lesson began at 2:00. she'd lived in Australia for a year and a half, so i went out on a limb and taught her something from the Level 8 book, and she excelled. not only was her language great but... you know those rare times when you meet someone, and it feels like you were "supposed" to be friends with them? not in any kind of cheesy romance novel sort of way, i'm talking about that immediate friendship click that shatters any and all assumptions you might have about building trust and familiarity with time, and makes you think that maybe people really are connected to each other somehow. maybe that's not hippie new-agey bullshit after all.

at the end of the trial lesson (which turned into more of a drinking round minus the alcohol than a lesson really) i slipped back into Corporate Whore Teacher Mode and started recommending courses that would be a good fit for her. at which point she smile and whispered, with a slight Aussie twang:

"Can you keep a secret?"
"Yes, of course."
"Pinkie promise?"
"Yes, pinkie promise."

after we pinkie swore (something i haven't done since i was about 13 in my friend Laura's basement), she told me her secret. i can't disclose the contents of that secret--hey, i do not fuck with the Pinkie Promise--but i will say that she had no intentions of taking English lessons at my school, and hadn't in the first place. she had business-related ulterior motives for coming to school that day.

"oh, but... we are the same age and it would be fun to take your lesson... i'll miss you so much!!" spoken like we were lifelong friends at an airport about to depart to a different country after instead of a teacher and potential customer at a language school having met 30 minutes ago. "you won't tell anyone then?"
"no, of course not. can i tell you a secret?"
"yes."

there was more whispering about visas and work and whatnot, and she said she may know someone who could help me get a job and/or a visa. wow! a cool new friend, and a person who could quite possibly be an important work/visa connection. the freak sun shower turned out to be a good omen after all.

i looked up at the clouds; like the arm of a polar bear hugging the mountains miles away. when i walked home from work tonight, i breathed in the October air, air that smells the same way across the largest of the world's oceans, my favorite smell of fire and rot, death and rebirth.

persona and poseurism

after the initial 6 months of hell, the English teaching gig gets pretty easy. mind-numbingly so. i can recycle my old lessons again, moments of silence don't freak me out as if class is a dead party i'm hosting, and i've learned how to effectively pretend to give a flying ratsass when a supervisor calls to harp on about textbook sales or other such profit whorey crap. my job does not fall into the "stressful" category.

but for some reason i end some days completely exhausted. am i getting bored with my own lessons? perhaps. am i tired of making money for a company that's going to run itself into the ground within the next 5 years out of sheer idiocy no matter what i do? HELL yes. that's a big reason why it gets to me, but it's not the main one. and i think i may have stumbled on a big clue this week.

almost any job requires a certain degree of falsity, of projecting an image of "professionalism" that runs so incongruently with who you really are, of being a purveyor of utter complete bullshit. that is one of the world's only immutable truths. but eikaiwa teaching takes that bullshitting to a whole new level, because you have to somehow learn to integrate it with truth. see, companies and schools want "professionalism." but we as teachers have to pander to the students. and most of them want something completely different. some of them want a drinking buddy, some want a drill sergeant. some want a performing monkey, others want a therapist. they want a relaxed atmosphere, but we have to give it to them in a cookie cutter Ikea edifice that looks like a combination of a Starbucks and a sanitarium.

on wednesdays i teach a girl named Asami who goes to the university here in Beppu. she's almost like a little sister to me; we've had some good conversations despite her relatively low speaking level. i told her that i sing angry, loud shit at karaoke. "oh, no Chris-sensei! my image is you dress in beautiful clothes and rike quiet kurassikaru (classical) music." i laughed and told her that, no, actually i like to wear ripped jeans and ratty thrift store t-shirts and sing "Zero" by the Smashing Pumpkins at karaoke. but nonetheless, she'd bought the bullshit. hook, line and sinker.

compare that with Shin, another uni student i teach on Saturdays. he's not so much a student as a drinking buddy (which is totally allowed, even encouraged, in my company). he probably learns more English by coming out and drinking with the foreigners than he ever would in my class. that's probably why most days he doesn't come to class, he simply sends me a text message that says "not coming to class. hangover. wanna drink later?" and that would be his real lesson.

but he actually showed up last Saturday. i went through all the motions, all that communicative method crap that i slavishly adhere to because it's my job, but the whole time i was thinking... "dude. Shin once made sure i didn't puke on my own shoes after we bombed a few Jaegermeisters at Uotami. and here i am, pretending to be a teacher or something. what a goddamn joke."

and the crazy thing is, i'd probably teach better and my students would learn more if i could just cut the whole "professional" bullshit and have fun with them. and you know what else? i guess being All Things to All People can be pretty stressful after all.

Tokyo

Asscrack of Dawn

The first few peeks out the windown of the bus i took of Tokyo's outskirts were about what i had expected to see-towering high rises housing the throngs of denizens in the world capital of white collar urban indentured servitude. the sky, a pre-dawn smoggy grey. welcome to Tokyo.

after getting to the bus depot at Tokyo station, i waited a few minutes for the station restaraunts to open their gates. my "moruningu setto" of decent coffee and a positively god-awful excuse for a panini sandwich it was like rancid Taco Bell meat mixed with government surplus school cafeteria lunch cheese wrapped in soggy Wonder Bread, a vile enigma wrapped in nostalgia. over that, i pored over my Lonely Planet Japan book and stole glances at the patrons.

for overworked, overrushed white collar slaves, they look pretty leisurely. there's a salaryman taking his sweet time with a tabloid newspaper, another with a comic book. an elderly couple leafing through a guidebook. another businessman has been out cold since i arrived, his arms sprawled out across the table. none of the staff seems to care. he's still asleep when i leave an hour later.

with a walk out to the Imperial Palace, i see still more office workers. one's stopping to stare at the swans in the palace moat (hehehe there's a palace with a moat in the middle of Tokyo, that's so cool!). another worker in a black suit is conducting the iPod Symphony Orchestra as he ambles down the path with his eyes closed. another rather elderly looking one is e-mailing on his cell phone.

these people find some cool ways to handle stress.

Baseless in Harajuku

it's raining. i'm cold and i'm wet. my jeans, the only ones i've brought, are starting to take on a wet dog/stale cigarette smell. i'm sitting in a damn Starbucks of all places, watching the people go by outside the window; there are lots of people out in spite of the rain. most of them are much too fashionable for raincoats. i couldn't find a manga cafe to sleep or shower in. Tanya (the friend i'm staying with) won't get off work until 8, which means i have no place to sleep or shower, sleep or sit until then. and to top it off, i can't get a hold of Yuta to at least keep me company until Tanya gets off work.

hmm. Yuta, a bona fide drunk with his surprisingly low English speaking ability (that's probably much better than he lets on), cheeky smartass charm, simultaneously soft-spoken and intoxo-noxious, reasurring and inaccessible, flaky and calculating, unintelligible and intuitive, loves and loathes himself much like Japan itself. i can't remember at what point he went from an amusing platonic drinking buddy who liked to hit on me nonstop, to a guy i sit and brood over in a Harajuku Starbucks. and i hadn't consciously missed him for most of the summer; it's just when he comes staggering back into my life does all that abscence hit me like standing up from one of those 2-hour shochu benders we'd had in Kagoshima..... cut back to my birthday a week earlier, when he was in Beppu for a visit.

"Tokyo de, ne?" he told me as the drunken haze ascended over our tentative embrace. Tokyo de. he would be with me in Tokyo. the Japanese language has such a way of squeezing so much implication into a few sentences. he's holding back again, just like in Kagoshima after i'd sat on a train that reeked of piss for 5 hours and braved a Meet The Parents (Who Don't Speak Any Fucking English Whatsoever) awkwardness just to visit him. now what in the hell would i do that for? could it be i actually have feelings for the guy who, on our first date, introduced me to people as an "Aeon teacher from Canada" (i'm a GEOS teacher from the States), and got too drunk to speak English. why? who the fuck knows why. probably for the same reason expats stay for years on end in a place that hates them.

but in any case, shit happened like it does and the meeting i had envisioned didn't happen and i was severely disappointed about that. maybe it was just his nonsensical way of avoiding another dramatic goodbye like on the Kagoshima train platform.

ugh. why do i do this to myself? i am free to go anywhere i choose. i came to Japan last June, and i jetted up to one of the biggest, most mythologized cities in the world with my phone and all of my contacts sitting in my bag to go with me--and yet i may as well be in 1955 waiting by the phone for That Guy to call and say "say, let's get some root beer floats in Shibuya. it would be swell!"

well fuck that. i'm going out in the rain, and i'm going to Meiji Jingu shrine.

Meijin Jingu Shrine is sublime in the rain, really. no throngs of tourists to contend with, it's a sacred place with holy water mist wafting from the sky, cleansing me and the sooty city of Tokyo. let it go, you're going to get wet. you're going to get cold. and you're going to get hurt. but pass through the forest and the Torii gates and you will be healed.

My Host's Impending Deportation

i've always wondered about the power of intention and what you really want to happen--do those things have a way of happening according to your true wishes?

Tanya, much as i love her dearly, is a victim of full-on Expat Syndrome. Expat Syndrome is best explained by the following dialogue:

Expat Syndrome-ite: This place is a goddamn joke. the people are idiots, the language is stupid and you can't get any good cheese in this country.
You: okaaayyy.... so uh, how long have you been here?
ES: 5 years.
You: so if this place sucks so much, why don't you leave?
ES: don't be stupid.
You: no seriously, look. you're not married or anything, and you're stuck in a dead-end job. you had the balls to leave your home country in the first place, so why stay here?
ES: ...... (sigh) you just don't get it yet, do you?

indeed, foreign places do have a way of sucking, in more ways than one. they suck time and life force out of certain individuals, and the conscious mind wouldn't have it any other way. they keep people here like gravity, a whirling vortex of cynical xenophobia, a proverbial line of chalk drawn around you in a box shape and a whisper in your head saying "YOU MUST NOT LEAVE THIS BOX"-- maybe that's when the subconscious steps in. maybe that's why Tanya did the seemingly illogical thing that she did....

since you're likely to be completely confused by the musing of the last 2 paragraphs, let me give you some background. my friend Tanya, a graduate of a university here in my adopted city, did what many do after graduating from a Japanese university--go to Tokyo to seek her fortune (or her poverty. whatever). she attained enough fluency in the Japanese language in the past 4 years to secure herself a job with a Tokyo travel agency, work to tide her over until she started her own business. she'd been working illegally since her graduation in March, and her company was in the process of filing for a work visa.

until the day she up and decided she couldn't take it anymore--she had no choice but to quit her job right in the middle of the application process. her company stopped the application, much to her chagrin and that of her friends, her lover, and her potential business partner. Tanya is a smart girl, fluent in 5 languages and blessed with enough savvy (as much as i hate that word, i can't think of a better one) to royally screw her employer over. why then.... WHY would she do something like this? if she had only waited another week, hell probably even a day, she would have had her visa, and she could nor only have quit, but also photocopied her ass and placed it in an advertisement for her agency in Hello Work and there would've been fuck all that her former employer or Immigration could do about it. IF she had waited for ONE MORE DAY. but--

"i couldn't wait anymore. my boss he's.... he's just a bad person and Japanese companies are ridiculous. i couldn't wait anymore."

i didn't judge her verbally. i didn't say what i was thinking, which was "what the hell were you thinking?!" because i knew the truth. she wanted to get out, and this was the only way. deportation. exile.

the only way out of the self-imposed exile of Expat Syndrome is to have your host government impose real exile. become physically removed from the chalk box.

Ueno and the Bitchiest Hippie Ever

i spent my last day in Tokyo a bit drained from Tanya's visa tribulations and giving up on seeing Yuta. i went to Ueno, a place reportedly less fashionable than Shibuya or Harajuku. good. that's more my style. Ueno is not the place for a wild night out in Tokyo, but it looked like that wasn't going to happen for me anyway. so i started looking for a place i might have a quiet drink... when i noticed a small chalkboard advertising the "Space Cake Cafe."

i was intrigued. follow the White Rabbit.

there was a dizzyingly winding staircase leading to a basement bar that was more than a bar. they had postcards from far off locales, Patagonia fleeces for sale, and an aquarium tank full of... paraphenalia. and presumably the goods to go with it.

now, this wasn't exactly a foreign thing to me. in fact, this was something from home that i kinda missed (and when i say "kinda missed," it means i fucking fiend for that shit and curse the US postwar occupation for convincing Japan that an inoccuous, naturally occurring plant is satan in arboreal form). but i knew that this was not Amsterdam, not Phuket, not Vancouver, not Happy Herb's Pizza in Phnom Penh; hell it wasn't even Meadville, Pennsylvania. it was Tokyo and i was a foreigner. and man do they love picking up foreigners for any remote association with drugs around here. plus i was alone. my instinct said to run, but i didn't want to lose face. so i did the only sane and sensible thing i could think of.

i ordered a gin and tonic and sat down.

my first sips were leisurely, read over a very educational French magazine all about cultivating mushrooms. until i could feel the eyes of the barmaid burning into me like microscopic embers. i got the distinct feeling that i was not welcome there, that i was a liability.

i chugged the rest of the gin tonic, paid the lady, and ran back up the spinning staircase into the Ueno night. with paranoia like that, who the hell needs weed anyway?

Tokyo--Final thoughts

after 3 days here, i still don't quite know what to think about it. i certainly didn't have the idealised Lonely Planet experience of Tokyo with the neon lights of Shibuya and the obnoxious Americans in Roppongi. no, i got something different. i got rained on, heart hurt, and a slice of a Same Shit Different Day existence there. and for some odd reason... i can't wait to go back there again to see it on a better day.

Kyoto

last time i promised the 2nd installment of Summer Sonic, complete with Metallica.

well tough shit. i got lazy. this entry is all about the Kyoto and Tokyo trip i took a few weeks ago. i might finish Summer Sonic sometime though... if i feel like it.


the Beppu Osaka ferry, revisited

the most god-awful overpriced greasy noodles i've had in recent memory began this trip. whoever thought that serving godawful greasy cold pseudoChinese hokkein noodles on a boat is a good idea is obviously the lucky recent recipient of a frontal lobotomy. almost as catatonic, their drool almost as translucent, as one who chooses to eat such a meal, and pays nearly 500 yen for it.

there's something depressing and slightly (alright, more than slightly) pathetic about eating alone. i'm a big condoner of solo travel, but it's the single serving dinners (if i may allude to Fight Club) that'll kill your soul and rot your brain faster than greasy MSG. and yet here i am, pretending to be fully engrossed in Kerouac over my godawful greasy cold MSG coated noodles like some kind of mysterious intellectual gaijin. unlike the last boat ride, there are no infinitely more outgoing travel companions to attract the creepy drunk Japanese shipping company guys freely dispensing cheap sake in a carton like last time. "keep away, for i am just one step away from being a creepy raving vagabond," says my aura. "don't you even fucking THINK about being a cow on my fast track to insanity."

and yet Japan has to be the ideal place for solo eaters. as i look around, about half of the people here are enjoying their single serving dinners. most restaraunts have counter seating to avoid the feeling of a vast range of formica desolation out in front of you. nope, you go elbow to elbow when you eat alone, close enough to stab someone's cornea with a chopstick, but never to speak to them.

unfortunately, there is no such counter style seating in the ferry cafeteria. blast and damnation.

i slept about as well as i had expected to on that damn ferry. it was less crowded this time, but it had the same mildly amusing Japanese quiz show on the overhead TV, and the same cruel green exit light shining in my face all night. and inexplicably sound asleep elderly women snoring in my ears. but hey, i got transportation and a night's accomodation for 7000 yen. insane MSG dreams and fallout green lights in my face were but a small price to pay for passage to the cultural cradle of Nihon.

Ohayou Kyoto

Daylight and a local train from Osaka Port brought me to Kyoto Eki, a space-age soaring atrium of modern transportation. or so it liked to tell itself. there are travellers with bigger backpacks than they could possibly need, tourists with hard-shell Samsonite and hotel reservations (reservations? HA!), young salarymen in suits (kids in black Armani straightjackets), schoolkids on field trips, and people with Kendo sticks in long cases. my breakfast is melon-pan, yogurt, pineapple juice and weak coffee from AMPM, eaten while observing the frentic chaos that rushes at 730am on a Sunday morning in Kansai.

a "night person" to the core, i feel something for "morning people" that straddles awe, admiration and derision. those perky fuckers and their sunny outlook on life, they get on my nerves. during the summer in Beppu, it's a rare night that i get to sleep before 230am, a rare day i can bring myself to greet with a guttral groan and slap to the snooze alarm before 11 (and that's on weekdays; weekends it's more like 1 or 2 if i'm hung over. which i usually am). but somehow travelling solo invokes in me that Ben Franklin spirit of "early to bed and early to rise" bullshit, awakening in me the realization of a whole world alive in the mornings when i can do nothing but stay unconscious out of sheer spite.

i mean.... on normal days there's nothing to look forward to but Same Shit Different Day (ah, the nouveau mantra of Benny's "early to bed"). but away from home (wait, Beppu is "home?") there are unfamiliar noises and stresses and uncertainties and wonders to shake me awake. there's the physical exhaustion and throbbing in your feet and calves from a day of exploring, the mental toll of days spent in Zen meditation and temples (replicas), and on crowded buses. it's exhausting, pondering the fact that people live--they LIVE!--Same Shit Different Day existences in these great ancient capitals of the world. there is indeed a person behind the Mickey Mouse mask at Disney World.

after a short accomodation hunt, my whirlwind and crapshoot tour of Kyoto begins. the Lonely Planet pantheon decrees that 2 days is the "absolute minimum" amount of time to spend in this city. well, sorry. that's what i have. i'm reminded of the time i went to Paris 4 years ago. it was about this time of year, when summer's death rattle puts a chilly vapour into the September breezes. i took one of those whirlwind weekend tours of Paris with a GErman tour group that veritably grabbed us by the hand and ran us through the streets of Paris like a double-decker bus outta hell in 36 hours (it was Rainbow Tours, and i think one of their double-deckers tipped over on a highway a few years ago. but that's just a coincidence). it was like using a moldy, herpes-infected frathouse beer funnel to chug a bottle of aged Merlot, a drink that should be imbibed sip by savoury sip in a snifter. or at least from a shared herpes-infected bottle on the banks of the Seine.

if Paris was funneling Merlot, then my 2 days in Kyoto were going to be like.... aw hell i can't even think of a clever simile right now; the point is i was going to see jack diddly shit of Kyoto in the grander (Lonely Planet) scheme of things. but that's okay,

because i would just gratefully take in whatever Kyoto wants to show to me, like a single cup of green tea and sweets on the coffee table in your inn, while roaring for seared yakiniku. or the goodnight kiss that leaves you aching for something more. that's Kyoto.

there, there's a good simile after all.

Kyoto is a UNESCO labyrinth

Kyoto is home to approximately eleventy million and forty five UNESCO heritage sites. well, like i said i had 2 days. so i had 2 choices--painstakingly plan the most efficient route to as many of them as i could get to, or....

halfassedly amble around town at whim, get lost, wander around lots of milquetoast residential areas with Soviet-esque apartment blocks, all the while hoping to stumble upon a few personages of historical significance and admire the Zen mandala-like journey i took in getting there.

i glanced at the maps the tourist office had given me. finding the "international tourist" office had been a bit of a Zen pilgrimage in itself, tucked away on the 7th floor of the upscale department store attatched to the train station, miles away from the conveniently located office for domestic tourists. but their English was great, and they were every bit as freakily helpful as most in the Japanese service sector are. so... which walking tour to take....

i fumbled around with the walking tour maps, the first of eleventythousand times that day, and found
"Higashiyama Area. Start this walking tour from Gojozaka Bus Stop, heading for Kiyomizu Temple. The approach to Kiyomizu Temple is an attractive winding road lined with touristy bladyblah and lovely foshizzle. From Kiyomizu Temple to Maruyama Park there are woiervnkds and an array of stammygasterdom and shrines. Crossing Maruyama Park keep walking northward to Heian Shrine, whose garden is admired for its cherry and iris flowers in season. "

Eastern Kyoto. Higashiyama-ku. yep, sounds good to me.

Higashiyama was crowded that day, mostly by Japanese tourists but with a healthy dose of gaijin as well. not quite sure where to go, i simply went with the schools of salmon, upstream. hey, throngs of tourists can't be wrong about which UNESCO heritage sites are most worth seeing. the roads diverged--one seemed to logically follow the border of the temple grounds, the other went up into a back street lined with garbage cans and kakidoori (shaved ice) stands. hmmm.... the map seems to say go up the back street. whatev.

this route passed through one of the biggest cemeteries i've ever seen in Japan. looking down at the gravesites carved into a hillside was almost like being a giant, overlooking a typical skyline-- rectangular graves compactly placed jutted about 3 feet up into the air like miniature skyscrapers in a city of the dead. but instead of industrial pollution, the peaceful smell of incense wafted up into the atmosphere. it got me thinking about the power of smells to evoke memories and associations in your brain. my friend Jessy used to burn a strikingly similar smelling incense to cover up the smell of um... other substances that were vapourised in her room at the Spanish house junior year of college. for me, it was the smell of nostalgia, freedom, intellectualism. and secrecy. for the Japanese, it probably makes them think of holy men, shrines, New Year, and the death of loved ones.

after i while of musing i realized that i'd probably veered pretty far off the walking tour, but i didn't care. anyway, there was another temple coming up and i'm sure it was important. so i paid my 500 yen and had a look. the whole complex was huge; i wasn't even sure if it was all part of the same grounds. what struck me about this one was how it was just sort of carved into a hillside and propped up by scaffolding. Japan is such a seismically active place, i wondered how the knees of the scaffolding hadn't buckled when the earth inevitably jerked up with sudden deft force as it often does here, sending the temple falling down like images of California McMansions bellyflopping to the valley below and its Buddhas careening with it. divine intervention? perhaps. or maybe it's a replica.

Entourage in Gion

let me tell you, Zen journeys have a way of rendering one hungry as balls. so i ducked into a random restaraunt during some down time (a great way of avoiding solo dining awkwardness) and got some curry. i sat next to the window facing the kitchen, thinking that was a bit silly since i was in one of the most celebrated cities in the world, but i'd rather have a view of a dingy curry shop with tobacco stained doilies on the tables, but that it was probably rude to sit with my back to the staff. so it was rather odd that i chose that one particular moment to turn around and have a look outside the window--that's when i saw her.

it was sort of like when you're 8 years old and you go to Disney World or Universal or whatever, and there she is in all her heavy L'Oreal and synthetic polyester satin glory--Ariel or Princess Jasmine, or Belle or whatever random princess is suddenly the object of squealing little girls (and a few little boys as well). at Disney World, even at that young age, we knew deep down that it wasn't really Sleeping Beauty, but a representative of her,like department store Santa Clauses. some of us even knew that Snow White was likely some college student named Tammy on semester break from Florida State who wanted some extra cash and had the looks and charisma to spend the summer as a goddess. we had the Doublethink necessary to know that, and even to use it as a source of inspiration--perhaps someday, we could be princesseses for a summer as well.

but here in Kyoto, her name was Hatsumomo or Sayuri, or Mameha (most likely not her birth name), in that chalk-white makeup, artfully bearing the weight of silk and history and waxen black hair and stigma, even her feet carrying wooden geta blocks. she has a line of people, young and old, Japanese and foreign, following her. but unlike the giggling 8 year olds at Disney World asking for Cinderella's autograph, they maintain a safe distance from her out of reverence, awe, perhaps even fear. why? because she's the real deal. she walks the line between fact and fiction, of a world on Earth that gets as close to myth as one possibly can. and she is its envoy.

The Search for Kinkakuji

Kinkakuji Temple is one of the most famous sites in Kyoto, and one of the most famous in all of Japan. it's a golden temple. here, look. see? golden temple. and it seemed, as it's one of the most famous in Kyoto not to mention all of Japan, that i should see it on my first visit. and one would also think i'd be able to find it. well.... the following is the story of how i managed to miss Kinkakuji temple.

i actually had a decent night's sleep at the whatever Ryokan i stayed at for probably more money than i really should have (except when you stop to consider i'd spent the night before on a miserable ferry, and i'd beon a miserable night bus the next) . but it was one of those sleeps that leaves you aching for more... but there was sightseeing to be done and UNESCO World Heritage Sites to be gawked at. in the words of the Beastie Boys, there would be "no sleep til Brooklyn."(or Tokyo. whatever).

at this point i'd abandoned maps altogether and started relying on the bus labels that tell you where it's going. there were no buses for Kinkakuji that i could see... but there were some for Ginkakuji. hmm. interesting. well.... ok, sometimes there are variations on the Romaji spelling for Japanese names, so maybe this was just a bastardization of "Kinkakuji." and in any case, it'd be damn nice to get on a bus and off my feet. so i boarded the Ginkakuji bus. and rode. and rode and rode. finally we reached something that sounded important: Ginkakuji Temple and the Philosopher's Path (hahaha not to be confused with Harry Potter and the Philos-ok fine enough of that shit).

Ginkakuji temple was nice. it had a Zen sand garden and an area of lush bamboo forests (come on, can you really describe bamboo forests as anything but "lush?") and a place to climb up and overlook everything, every splinter in the wood of the temples and every swirl in the Zen sand gardens. i snapped a picture and little white wishies were floating in the air everywhere, a truly magical site. but it wasn't the golden temple i'd set out to find that day. apparently Kinkakuji and Ginkakuji were, in fact, 2 different places altogether.

i headed back down the hill and took the Philosopher's Path next to the canal in order to avoid the throngs of tourist kitsch shops, but i did get an ice cream. damn they have good ice cream in Kyoto. i even passed by something that was either a crime scene, or a television set made up to look like a crime scene; i eventually surmised that it was a television filming set. at the end of the path, i came back out on the street and realized that i had no bloody clue where the nearest bus stop was, or if it even would go to Kinkakuji.

after some considerable wandering around and sitting at a bus stop, i eventually did find a bus going to Kinkakuji. it was clear on the other side of town.... but that's okay, because i'd seen something i wouldn't have seen that day, had i been a bit more of a planner. the bus FINALLY came and... hey look, a seat! awesome! man these things are difficult to get and (*yawn*) this rocking is kinda nice and the glass feels so cool against the side of my head, this map says i have a good half hour before i get to.......

(45 minutes later)


oh fuck. where the hell am i? "Kono basu wa Ginkakuji yuki desu" or something to that effect... which means i'm heading for Ginkakuji. again. i slept through the damn Kinkakuji bus stop and i'm going in the wrong goddamn direction. i look at the clock on my cell phone. 4:30. Kinkakuji will close in half an hour. shit.

on my kotasu, there's a stack of postcards. one of them bears the image of Kinkakuji Temple, shining like the eye of heaven itself. i set out on a journey to find it, and failed. maybe that's what Kyoto wanted. it wants me back, again and again, to discover it on Kyoto's, and my own rambling, unplanned terms.