I’m alone at the train station. Kelly is at home and I’m meeting Marisa out in the land.
I’m not very good at the whole metro thing. Or direction thing in general, so we’ll see how well this goes. It’s a trial run for tomorrow, when I have to get myself to the airport.
This is concerning in and of itself, but the key words of that last sentence are “myself” and “airport”. This combination is important because it means that this trip is almost over. 99% finished. Which, okay.
I’ve been panicking about it a little bit these past few days. I know that you can’t just travel with your friends forever, that you can’t just eat and walk your way across the world and that there is a life to be lived and things to be done at home. But damn lads, this has been amazing.
I know it’s easy to see it like that, but for me, I usually only like things in retrospect. But this has been incredible, in the moment, almost every moment. I usually have a hard time being present in my day to day and tend to forget to appreciate what’s going on right now, right in front of me but.
I don’t know, this is getting too Final Day introspective and I should be appreciating my last 24 hours here before returning to Real Life.
I do like walking alone to places. It makes me feel like I live there. Especially when its a way we’ve walked a lot. Our house is right next to a river and you get to cross a bridge between it and the metro station. There’s some trash caught in the current that’s been there for as long as we’ve been here at least. It’s a couple of empty tea bottles and a balloon in the shape of a two and they look absolutely spooky at night time. But they’re familiar. We also have to cross two sets of tracks to get to the station which is spicy when the lights start flashing and the bars come down while you’re still in the middle of them. And there’s a Family Mart right outside of the station, so it’s easy to imagine myself stopping for snacks at the end of my day before trekking across the tracks to go home. I’ve been thinking a little bit more about applying for JET. It’s really daunting when I start thinking about the whole year abroad in a foreign place thing, but I’ve always liked to dig into places and having a regular walk helps me imagine what it would be like to live here.
But that’s something to think about later.
Right now I need to get into town and find Marisa.
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In true final full day fashion, we tried to pack everything we could in. Which meant getting up at 7 am again. Marisa regaled us with a lovely rendition of “Here Comes The Sun”. It was needed, but painful.
We managed to get out of the house with no break ins or bike accidents. I finally figured out how to open the rice triangle things with the complicated packaging. It’s kind of sad that I finally got the hang of it on the last day but better late than never, right?
The first spot we went to was a bamboo forest with a garden temple. There were supposed to be monkeys here but we didn’t see any. I’ve had enough of monkeys.
But you know what was there?
Mosquitos.
Not as many as before but they were there.
We came prepared this time though. I wore long sleeves and pants, but it got hot, so I had to expose The Arms. Luckily we had new bug spray. I tested it by spraying a mosquito directly. And while I’ve never really thought of myself as a vengeful person, that was a satisfying experience.
But the park was cool. We walked along this really wide river to get up to the mountain. It was kind of brown, but it smelled like this river I used to camp at when I was young, so I had a good five minutes where I was eight years old again.
This mountain park also had a paved path that lead up to the top and there were men literally running people up it in a rickshaw. It looked painful, but they were very in shape, so.
Something that kind of sucks about traveling is that things can start to feel a little repetitive. It also gets hard when you’re tired and you just want to rest. This happened when I was in Europe and took a nap in a museum across from a Monet painting. And it happened a little bit today when we got to the garden of the temple. It’s especially hard when you realize what you’re doing. You want to drag yourself up off the place that you’ve settled down at, go admire the way that the rocks of the pond stick up out of the water, or the combed gravel, and think about the unique history of the place your sitting at but your eyes kind of burn and you’ve begun to abstract a little bit. Kelly and I ended up getting exiled from Marisa so she could have a moment of zen.
After our unsuccessful appreciation, we headed back down to the village and got ice cream. I got tofu and sesame, which tastes exactly how you would imagine it does but also really good. I feel like its going to be one of those things that I think about when I get home and get sad because I know I can’t have it until I come back, whenever that is.
Remember that temple we tried to go to yesterday? We decided to try to get there again, with someone else besides me doing the directions, and what do you know? We made it.
If there’s anything I’ve learned on this trip its that if I’m in charge of getting us somewhere, we definitely won’t be seeing it.
But anyways, the temple. I think this was the coolest one we’ve been to. It has that really vivid orange paint, like the gates. There were a bunch of pagodas that towered over us and popped up through the trees. The really cool thing about this temple was that it over looked Kyoto and there was one structure that you could look through and see the whole city.
The actual temple itself was under construction, but we still got to walk through it. The thing that makes this temple different is that it has a stream that is split into three and these flow over a walkway and into a pond. You can walk under the streams and bring a ladle with you so you can catch some of the water and drink it for -, -, or -. You’re not supposed to drink from all three because it’s greedy.
Kelly started to not feel good (The Return of The Worm), so she headed back and Marisa and I wandered through the Gion District, which has a bunch of buildings built in the old style and feels like you’re walking through A Time Long Past.
It’s also supposed to be The Place To See Geishas, but I’ve since been informed that there was no chance in hell we were ever going to see one, but the hope was still there.
Marisa and I ended up down and abstracting a little bit again, trying to decide what to do and how to motivate to get where we needed to go. Kelly was feeling better (and also was locked out of the house because I was carrying the keys and forgot I had them until we had been separated for about twenty minutes) and wanted to meet us for dinner in downtown. I got it in my head that I really wanted to go to this chain curry place because we went there last year and I didn’t get this one dish (curry with cheese, don’t judge me) and I was told that it was really good.
And it’s haunted me ever since.
It ended up being okay, which is disappointing and also relieving. The place we ate at definitely reminded me a little bit of Denny’s, but instead of pancakes, there was curry. It was also cool because we ate at one of these restaurants last year in Taiwan during a Typhoon. We got to sit near a window and watch the rain come down while eating one of my favorite things. So it felt like it should be raining.
After that, Marisa left us to transport her luggage to her friends house because she’s staying a little while longer than I am.
This left Kelly and I to our own devices.
So, remember how I said that we noticed the floor listings at that department store? How there was a cat café?
Yeah, so today was the day I finally got to live my dream.
These were the most beautiful, bougie (boujee? Google is unclear) looking cats. Ever. Like they had definitely been hand selected for their aesthetics. The fluffy ones had these full Christmas Tree looking tails and were puffed up and pretty. The other ones had the little ears, some had short legs, and there was one that literally looked like it was pink.
And they were totally uninterested in anything we had to offer unless we shelled out a whole dollar and got some treats.
Which I did, because I’m a sucker and I want to be loved.
Don’t judge me.
So I got my two seconds of fame with the cats. I tried to make it last by dolling out the treats slowly, but the cats were on to my game and also sick of my bs and left me when I tried to get pets in. So I had to give up my bargaining chips a lot faster than anticipated.
I felt used, you know? It made me miss my cat, who is also food motivated, but will at least stick around and yell at me when I hold out.
It also made me kind of sad because the cats were definitely not rescues and totally purchased for aesthetic. Which makes sense because they are literally in a department store and live in a fish bowl where every body who is shopping can see these beautiful fluffy lads flouncing around and being uninterested in anything you have to offer. I get it, but also.
So after spending a scant twenty minutes trying to win the affections of these cats, we decided to leave and go back to the house for a little bit so we could start packing up. Kelly wasn’t feeling well again and told me to go on with out her.
So that’s how I ended up traversing solo and now we’re caught up to me taking public transportation alone.
I met up with Marisa at The Starbucks By The River. We took advantage of open container and got these really Not Good Grapefruit drinks and brought them to the arcade, where I got to relive my glory days as DDR champion. (Shout out to Ms. Emerson, my second grade P.E teacher. You really prepared me to shine on the dance floor a whole 15 years later.) I also got to try that circle game I was talking about before.
And I totally understand both the need for the gloves, because the speed needed to complete the game vs. friction totally burns your fingers, and I also understand the hype. It was so satisfying! If I was in anyway, shape, or form good at this game, I would be so into it. I’m into it now and I suck, so.
Maybe in a different life I come here after work and I am the Master of My Domain.
Alas.
We took more pictures at those booths, but this time it was only Marisa and I, so the only real choice was to take couples pictures.
And after that, it was time to go back. Which sucks, because I leave tomorrow and I’m really not ready to do that but I already have my ticket and I should go home and get a job and do stuff but also I really Do Not Want To Do That.
It’s hard, walking through a place when you know its that last time you will be there, either for forever or for a very long time. You try to take it all in, the way the lights bounce off the river, the way the cold of the air feels as you inhale, but its impossible because there’s too much and you know you will never have time to parse out all of it.
Sad stuff my dudes.
I think I’m going to miss our walk from the station the most.
Also the Pizza Man (or bun, I’m not really sure), which I just had for the first time. It’s literally a bun with mozzarella and marinara sauce and its beautiful and I’m pissed that it took me this long to buy it. (it was also a struggle buying it. I ended up with a pork bun the first time around and had to repurchase. I almost didn’t but Marisa reminded me about the curry + cheese debacle and how I would hate myself if I didn’t get it. She remains the wisest person on the trip.
I think that will be the thing that haunts me the most from this trip. That’s how it is with romance and bad timing thought.
Rip Rachel x Pizza Man.
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