70 miles an hour....blurry eyed but bushy tailed....
Cincinnati....glass and hot pavement....Queen City....Riverfront Park....beer and UC and Xavier....bright lights and green space....
Bumpy rush....then 30,000 feet and 500 miles per hour....
Touchdown....
Modern art and echoes and standing waves....Mont Royal and Vieux-Montreal....Jazz Festivals and Just For Laughs and Osheaga....City of Festivals and City of a Hundred Steeples....its Montreal. The smell of smoked meats and maple syrup and Starbucks rolling through the sound of French accents.
Then 13 hours at 40,000 feet...almost 600 miles per hour.
Touchdown....
Bright lights and glass and metal....long lines moving too slow and too fast....black car at maximum speed blurs through gates and lanes in the darkness....a black-grey sky and the city is...big.
Tokyo.
38 million strong.
Everything you think it will be, and more. Much more. The old and the new...the oldest and the newest....
Four days in Tokyo then Kanazawa for two, then on to Shirakawago and Takayama. After a couple of day there, Kyoto.
Several guided tours (including the Geisha District in Kyoto) but mostly out there just trekking all over the cities and the countryside.
Time spent in the ultra-modern (like the interactive art show) as well as in traditional tea houses and inns (complete with traditional breakfast & dinner), from the largest city in the world (Tokyo) to a tiny mountain village (Shirakawago), from fancy restaurants to the smallest urban eateries you'll ever seen....
Tokyo....walking at night with GPS off...sake in the blood....walking....turn left, turn right, turn left again....walk until there is no more English and turn down the darkest alleys. Still safe. One of the safest cities in the world. Find a little place, maybe 10 feet wide....drinking plum wine and eating sashimi on the "patio" - tuna and salmon, but also Tako and Ika (octopus and squid) and Uni and Ebi (urchin and shrimp) and Gyusashi (beef) and Basashi (horse) and kuma (bear).
Horse? Yes, horse.
Yum.
And navigating that with hand signals and a contest to see if our Japanese or their English is worse.
Daylight....tour....traditional Japanese instruments, some familiar, some completely alien and new....and, strangely but somehow not, Jimi Hendrix's guitar.
A dream....
Strict roadways and ridges on the sidewalks....no trashcans but no trash....Godzilla and Goku, Ultraman and the best Othello players in the world....the thrill of rain and aggressive obliviousness....
Markets and temples and more markets and more temples....Buddhist and Shinto and a mountain in Kyoto with a path lined with over 10,000 red torii gates, Mount Inari. Stone foxes. 764 feet up and 2.5 miles that takes 2 hours and feels like a marathon.
Samurai and Ninja museum and watching a pre-contest Sumo training. Walking the path through an ancient village (population under 100) and drinking Shochu riverside out of the bottle. Rice crackers and dried meat. ~2.jpeg)
Watching kids make their way to school and watching older kids doing Tik-Toks on landmarks, from city streets to country bridges.
~2.jpeg)
Watching kids make their way to school and watching older kids doing Tik-Toks on landmarks, from city streets to country bridges.
Culture, new and old....art...fashion....music....music....
And this, right here, is where he walked. The path Kitaro Nishida walked daily for years. Kitaro Nishida's mind and the mind of Robert Pirsig. But that's for another day...
Violent art and ringing the bell for prayer....busses and bullet trains....sunrises and sunsets....7-11 and Family Mart....and all convenient stores should be 7-11.
More markets and a few neighborhood grocery stores where nothing is in English and nobody speaks it, and there's something thrilling about that, too.
Whirlwind.....whirlwinds....rain and sirens and street performers....can a million people cross the street....art and music and fashion....and music....and music....
And a Rastafarian from Morocco speaking English and Arabic and Japanese and French, playing Amy Winehouse over a reggae beat while the most California surfer dude Japanese shop owner (who speaks none of our languages) pulls out a portable electric grill and we get a private meal overlooking the market at night, drinking whatever was in the bottle and eating the best steak ever made....then stumbling into the darkness....
Drums in the theater and drums on the street corner....and so much more.
And then, just like that, 40,000 feet and the chatter of 100 languages and the smell of coffee....
Touchdown....
Lights and the chatter of 100 languages and the smell of coffee....Toronto.
And then, just like that, 20,000 feet and the chatter of mostly English and the smell of coffee and we're back.
Lexington....blue tower and blue lights....Horse Capital of the World....horses and bourbon....bluegrass and blues....
Home.
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