Christmas in Kyoto into Nothingness
4:30 is when I woke up to take a shit I thought oh no, I might not be able to go, now another shit. I showered, had some coffee and read the news. I had preciously packed the night before so I didn’t have any excuses or delays getting out the door. I had a loose plan. My backpack consisted of headphones, a battery, bandaids, extra socks, some gum, a water bottle, a kind bar, and some ibuprofen — more than enough bullshit essentials.
The subway / train isn’t far away but I had one transfer that I worried about. As alert as can be at that time of the morning, I was pleased to know that instead of a 2 minute walk to transfer, it was a 2 second walk across the platform to the waiting train or so I thought. That was easy, too easy — what’s the catch. Ah yes, I got onto the local train instead of the express. Honestly I didn’t mind at all, it went from a mostly empty train after the transfer to another stop where workers, students began to start their day. Of course you can tell who’s going to work and who’s going to school — but also to my surprise I did not a single other traveller. Seeing all the people on and off was interesting, sure to never make eye contact as that’s fucking weird on trains / subways, as I know from my time in New York. I remain seated just listening to tunes and checking my phone to assure myself I’m on the right train (almost).
I arrived at my destined station, It wasn’t the last stop as I had read (because I was on the local) and almost didn’t get off in time. I make my way up the stairs and almost through the electronic turnstile — I say almost because I ran into a brief issue where I may or may not owe the rail staton a bit of fare for that ride — I scanned it, the doors opened, then quickly closed, I scanned my card again and didn’t assume it’d glitch again but it did, but the doors were too late — I had busted through to the other side, I looked for an attendant and none to be found, so I proceeded further down a long underground hallway (or tunnel). It was long — maybe 1KM but I did get to see some fantastic artwork (read advertisement) on the walls. I came upon a life-size version of Super Mario Bros — both walls to bottom of the first level of the game. It even included that underground secret warp zone. The 8bit classic soundtrack was even being pumped through speakers, a nice touch. Yet, I still wasn’t at the end of this tunnel.
I popped up out of the tunnel finally only to find it look like I’d made a giant loop and ended up back in Osaka, a semi-normal Japanese city — the only one I know. I had expected to be thrown back in time, like what I had seen in my very brief research. I’ve learned through my travels it’s okay to be surprised but to just continue on and follow the map to the intended destination.
If you, the reader think I’m being longwinded — it’s because I am. It’s because that I’m trying to both recall what I packed into a few hours and I’m trying to leave myself something to read later. After all if you don’t read your own bullshit, how can you expect anyone else to?
After a short walk from the station, I reached the destination. A trail that I just discovered the night before while looking at the map. It was called Philosophers path, it wasn’t any kind of hike — it was a simple walk alongside a canal on the outskirts of Kyoto. When I looked into why it was called that — it started opening up all kinds of other path ways of discovery. Of nothingness — which is undoubtedly and debatably a thing that does exist. The path is named for a man by the name of Kitaro Nishida — at this point I’m still barely scratching the surface of it all, and where further to go down these deep ponderings, but I know that I want to explore it further with time.
There’s much more to say but I’m afraid it’s all incidental - I bought myself a gift, headed back to the train and listened to the Dodger game — and that was all before noon.
