She tried to be calm, and leave things to take their course, and tried to dwell much on this argument of rational dependence: –“Surely, if there be constant attachment on each side, our hearts must understand each other ere long. We are not boy and girl, to be captiously irritable, misled by every moment’s inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our own happiness.” And yet, a few minutes afterwards, she felt as if their being in company with each other, under their present circumstances, could only be exposing them to inadvertencies and misconstructions of the most mischievous kind.

Jane Austen, “Persuasion”

2 December 2023

• Spa World (2.5h)

Janjan Yokocho

The morning after my ankle injury. I slept ten hours and wrote in bed until 14:30, unable to even shift my position. My right foot was red and swollen, its sole lined with a blue bruise. Like dusk at an autumnal temple.

But my capsule hotel was a two-minute walk (or ten, if limping) from two adjacent spots recommended to me long ago.

The first, courtesy of the American and Spanish volunteers from Jeonju in June: an udon and soba bar, the cheapest in existence. In a dining arcade full of affordable eateries, this one accommodated six clients. I devoured piping-hot kitsune soba, plus udon with egg and shrimp tempura, for 550 yen, all whilst huddled with Japanese ojiisans. Choosing a standing bar might not have been the best idea, though.

Spa World

The second, courtesy of the Korean student from Seoul in July: Spa World, the biggest onsen in Japan. This month, the Asian floor was women’s, while the European floor was men’s.

A Trevi fountain-inspired bath for Ancient Rome; caryatids around an Ancient Greek herbal bath; a micro-bubble bath in Atlantis; a blue cave modeled after Italy’s Blue Grotto Capri; and more.

The water was plain, but the presentation made up for it. Yes, I would like to soak naked next to Corinthian columns and Augustus of Prima Porta! What else had I studied about those in uni for? A sprinkle of philosophy and homosexuality, and this would’ve transported me right into Ancient Greece.

I soaked in an individual pot bath in a rustic, Finnish cabin area; waited half an hour for a sea salt bath; scrubbed myself with salt in a sea salt sauna; and finished off with an open-air Spain, where a scalding waterfall was crashing into an amazing rotenburo, splashing water and raising steam.

I left at 17:30. My ticket hadn’t included entry to the worldwide stone saunas, which included a room modeled after Israel’s Dead Sea.

In the early evening, I walked for ten minutes to a minuscule okonomiyaki shop, unique for including pineapple in their dishes. Ravenous and thirsty after hours of soaking and mere noodles, I devoured a squid variant, and drank six or seven cups of water.

It was the best okonomiyaki I’d had. By the end, however, I never wanted to have another. Half an okonomiyaki had always sufficed for me.

Umeda

Stomach bursting and foot limping, I returned to rest inside my capsule. Then, at night, I limped to the train station. The five bars and clubs on my list for east Umeda were too many for my current state. One would have to do.

I got lost inside Namba station, nearly stepped on a dead rat outside Osaka station, and crossed a sea of cool youth on the way to Umeda’s shopping arcades.

Osaka.

My pick for tonight was the bar I’d visited twice in March, whose owner remembered me. I drank mango juice and chatted with a 28-years-old Native American former flight attendant from California, now on his big trip. His hair was long and flowy, straight out of a shampoo commercial.

At 23:30, I left to take the train back to my capsule hotel. No alcohol, one short hour at the bar: I’d never gone out in such a responsible manner. My first time leaving before midnight. But my foot demanded that.

Today’s highlights: the soba and udon standing bar; Spa World; squid and pineapple okonomiyaki; the bar at night.

3 December 2023

• 11:55-12:05 Shin Imamiya station to Sakai station (Nankai line)
• Sakai Yokai Art Festival @ Aguchi Shrine (1h)
• 18:06-18:17 Sakai station to Shin Imamiya station (Nankai line)
• 18:50-19:00 Dobutsuen mae station to Kitahama station metro (Sakaisuji line), 19:15-20:05 transfer to Sanjo station (Keihan line), 20:35-20:40 Sanjo Keihan station to Misasagi station metro (Tozai line)

Sakai Yokai Art Festival

I checked out of my capsule hotel at 11:00 and stumbled upon an adjacent takeout stand that sold okonomiyaki and takoyaki for half the usual price. Breakfast secured.

The plan for today: a Yokai festival at a shrine in the southern outskirts of Osaka, a recommendation courtesy of the Trinidian girl from Bishamon-do last Saturday.

I arrived at 12:15. Nothing was happening. My cheese and egg squid okonomiyaki passed the time. More cabbage than that dark, heavy Okonomiyaki sauce that always made me want to die: the most light and delicious variant. The takoyaki was the same.

Even better than yesterday’s.

The shrine sold amazing Yokai themed merch, including masks and scary bracelets. I found an Okinawan kimono and a haori jacket for 500 yen each! The former was a bit drab in color and print, yet the latter (and the price) made up for it. I’d been itching to add those articles of clothing to my wardrobe.

No obi, though, so the vendor improvised an invisible knot using a box string.

The 24-year-old Trinidadian girl soon showed up with her friends. She found the perfect kimono to match her outfit for a mere 100 yen. Both our fabrics were silky, rather than plastic-y.

I invited the guy from last night, and all of us met other foreigners attending the festival, that soon we became eight:

1. The Native-American with the cascading hair
2. The lanky Trinidadian, teaching English in the countryside south of Osaka, previously stationed in Matsuyama
3. A 32-year-old Trinidadian with an enviable afro, currently on a 4-year-and-counting break from practicing law, teaching English, previously stationed in Matsuno (the smallest town in Ehime prefecture)
4. A lanky British lad from Wilshire, PhD students of robotics, wearing jewelry and black leather
5. A Kiwi girl who worked at a city hall
6. A 29-year-old teacher from Detroid. Trimmed afro and spectacles with embellished gold frames
7. Plus his coworker from Louisiana
8. Me

The festival was starting. A demon was painting giant calligraphy. More and more monsters came to life: zombies, ghosts, foxes, skeletons, and even a tanooki boasting a prominent phallus and scrotum. Japanese people had used tanooki ball sacks in the olden days to carry coins, so it was a sign of prosperity.

At 14:30, we paraded with everyone to a nearby shopping arcade. Everyone, as in, maybe 100-150 people in attendance overall. Neither too big nor too crowded, it was a great little festival, and my introduction to Yokai. The eight of us bonded in an instant and reveled in the monstrous imagery.

Numbers 4, 5, and 7 left in the end, so the rest of us walked to Sakai station and found a cheap ramen chain. I ate a soft-boiled egg with rice and seaweed, kimchi, and a mandarin shochu, all delicious.

Our conversation was nonstop fun. Later on, it became apparent that they were all mixed raced – the Native-American, the Trinidadian girls, and even the black Detroit guy, who had Native blood – which made my 100% Eastern European blood pale in comparison.

Food, festivals, and friends: (some of) the holy F’s. Everything flowed so easily, that it was hard to believe we’d just met, and harder to part ways. I’d forgotten that my foot was hurting. This was how I celebrated seven months on this land.

Kyoto

In the evening, I returned to Shin-Imamiya to pick up my luggage and a spring onion okonomiyaki from the takeout stand. After an hour and a half of train rides, I made it to my new couchsurfing host’s house in Kyoto.

Ray was a bright 30-year-old Chinese expat who had studied Japanese in Tokyo four years ago, and now worked in Gion. She lived alone in a large two-storey house straight out of Ghibli. Not a corner – even in the restroom – lacked such merch.

White paint, wooden textures, and a modern, round kotatsu. Every corner was filled with decorations, plants, books, dolls, magazines, figurines. Like a Totoro residence.

Her smile beamed so brightly from the first moment, that she was a clear Hufflepuff. Kind, gentle, loyal, optimistic. A people’s person, who enjoyed baking, and hosted so as to make a positive change. 

One of her cats pounced at my back and stuck his claws into my shoulders.

“Pudding!” she yelled. “ダメよ！It means he likes you.”

My private room was half the size of a Tokyo apartment, featuring a heated bedsheet.

Today’s highlights: cheese and egg squid okonomiyaki plus takoyaki for breakfast; my first kimono and haori; the Yokai festival with all the expats; the late lunch with the expats.

4 December 2023

• 15:40-15:50 Gion shijo station to Fushimi Inari station train (Keihan line)
• Fushimi Inari (2h)
• 18:25-18:35 Fushimi Inari station to Sanjo station train (Keihan line)

Cloud Cafe

This morning, I noticed the bruise around my right sole had deepened and widened. My foot wasn’t red, but all of it was swollen.

My sister, a med student, had recently broken the same area of her foot. I’d probably fractured mine, according to her, maybe even broken it.

“Of course it doesn’t hurt, it’s the adrenaline,” she said, and ordered me treat it.

Today should’ve been a day trip to one of two locations, both of which turned out to be closed.

Instead, Ray drove us for five minutes at 10:00 to her teahouse in north Gion, a ten-minute walk from Yasaka shrine. It was full of cloud decorations and pillows; the walls were painted sky blue.

I worked feverishly on my computer for 4.5 straight hours, possessed by thoughts about the future. A lot of planning and research (that later got deleted – thanks, computer).

Fushimi Inari Taisha

At 15:00, I popped by a teahouse inside Yasaka shrine the German guy from Ito was now working at. He was sick last week, and too busy today. So I took the train to Fushimi Inari.

Having visited this supreme shrine in April precisely at 7:00 am, this time I decided to watch the sunset from the top, and explore it afterwards.

Another mountaintop shrine at dusk might not be the best idea, on second thought.

The torii tunnel was as crowded as it got. I climbed for half an hour to the observation point and watched the sun set over Kyoto. Then I continued to the top.

Crossing darkening torii tunnels all by myself was the exact atmosphere I’d hoped for. Twilight made everything more majestic. Quiet, mysterious, eerie; shadowy zigzags on the floor in-between gates. A sight more impressive (and devoid of tourists) than in morning.

An Existential Night of Baking

Back in Cloud Café, I helped Ray bake cakes for an event. She made the most elaborate kawaii models, often with cartoon characters. It was just like spending time with my sister, who also loved baking. I weighed ingredients, whisked mixtures, relished the taste of raw leftovers, and washed dishes.

“Baking relaxes me,” Ray said, “because I don’t have to use my head.”

The opposite of me.

Last April, she’d started hosting, despite having never couchsurfed. Her incentive for opening her house to strangers was quite the long and painful story. Hard at work on a pink teddy-bear cake, we somehow delved into the darkest pit a sentient being could fall into.

“I never tell this to anyone,” she said at some point. Her smile never wavered during our conversation, her ray never darkened. She was beaming even when confessing things that made me want to tear.

Déjà vu.  

My first couchsurfing experience, in late April with Saki, was the same. “I never talk about this with other people,” he’d said on our second evening together.

The same topic as today. I’d cried in his studio apartment. Then, in early May, I’d befriended a Japanese man outside Kawasaki Daishi temple. After a few hours together, he’d confessed the same. We were both crying while sitting by Meguro River.

One of my couchsurfing hosts from Seoul, who had hosted me in mid-May, was no different.

And now, Ray.

Why did I keep meeting such people? Because I was the same?

After a dark period in winter, Ray had undertaken meditating, and begun to see visions. A world of spirits, afterlife, reincarnation.

Since then, she’d embarked on a mission to become more cognizant of her breathing, not only when meditating. To improve her self-awareness and observe her the world and her existence without making any judgment. A bit like Buddhism, but also like cognitive-behavioral therapy, which I’d attempted at 19.

“There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” Shakespeare had written in Hamlet. She agreed.

“I changed my boyfriend’s name on my phone to remind me of my breathing,” she said. “And when I saw the kanji on your necklace, it reminded me as well.” (気仙 – to master your breathing)

Like me, the pit she’d fallen into in winter had propelled her to uproot her routine.

“I have a house, I have a job, both my parents are alive, I have friends, I have a boyfriend, and still – I couldn’t find any meaning,” she said. “We should all love each other while we’re in this world. And ourselves. I love myself unconditionally.”

Her next words, I’d also heard already.

“I think you can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself.”

Cowboy had said the same.

Did that explain my lack of romance? I wondered while crushing chestnuts. Sometimes I valued myself more than any other creature on this planet. Sometimes I wished I were someone else.

“You have to put your feelings first,” Ray said, her smile radiant.

A Slytherin had recently given me the same advice. But now, a Hufflepuff?

Perhaps it was possible to be both considerate and self-centered.

Her ex popped by the shop after on. They were now friends. Some lovers could survive a break-up, and stay on good terms.

Moreover, her current boyfriend lived in China. A long-distance relationship.

We left the teahouse at 23:00. A couple of couchsurfers joined us; Ray had another bedroom for them. A tall, bespectacled Romanian guy, a bit like an elongated, smart-looking puppy, and a British girl (who looked like Billie Eilish’s long-lost Parent Trap twin) from Bristol, couchsurfing and volunteering in Asia for a year.

They were both extremely fun to chat with. Ray made us Chinese scallion pancakes for dinner. Without noticing the time, I ended up going to bed at 3:00 am.

Today’s highlights: Fushimi Inari at sunset and dusk; baking with Ray.

5 December 2023

• Misasagi station to Yamashiro station metro (2m)
• Bishamon-do temple (20m)
• 8:50-9:00 Yamashina station to Ishiyama station train (Biwako line), 09:10-10:00 Ishiyama station to Miho Museum bus number 150
• Miho Museum (1h)
• 12:00-12:50 Miho Museum to Ishiyama station bus number 150, 13:00-13:08 transfer to Yamashina station (Biwako line), 13:20-13:28 transfer to Higashiyama station (Tozai line)

Bishamon-do Temple

I woke at 7:00, regretting every moment of no sleep. The Taiwanese uncle from Tainan had recommended I revisited Bishamon-do in early December for its famous red carpet of fallen leaves. Ray lived a mere 25 minutes from it, and it was on the way to today’s attraction. So a return this morning was a no-brainer.

To my enjoyment, the couchsurfing couple joined me. We grabbed donuts from Starbucks (butterscotch!) and I got to show them a non-touristy, rural side to the city. The red carpet resembled more a rusty mat, but I still enjoyed it.

Miho Museum

After dashing back to the station in stark contrast to my sister’s medical advice, I took an hour-long bus through the Biwa prefecture countryside to Miho Museum.

It was a private museum designed by the Louvre’s architect. The building was impressive, but the galleries were small and disappointing. Five rooms containing five to ten pieces each: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Rome, Greece, India, China, etc. There were some ancient reliefs, a nice mosaic of Dionysus and Ariadne, and nondescript Buddhas.

I lost interest quite fast, and condemned the price of the bus and museum. The brief introductions to each culture were largely irrelevant to the pieces on display. Nothing spoke to me, not even the temporary exhibition about Kinpusen deities (the golden realm on Mt Omine, where humans could communicate with divinities).

Groucy, fatigued, and bored, I returned to Kyoto. The curator of Miho and I were of a different mind.

Love and Cakes

Back in Cloud Café, a small gallery that sold tea ceremony utensils was renting it for the day. The Chinese managers had invited ten or so young Chinese expats living in Kyoto to discuss their artistic direction over Ray’s dramatic desserts.

I relished the incredible free peach oolong tea and cakes while everyone was conversing in Chinese. We spoke Japanese at first, yet they soon reverted to their first language. So I smiled and waited for time to pass.

With so many Chinese expats I’d been meeting in Japan, I not only wanted to visit this vast land, but also to learn their language. I added Chinese to my list of goals for the future.

In the afternoon, I helped the couchsurfing couple bake a vegan carrot cake on the cafe’s second floor, while the event continued downstairs. We discussed veganism a lot. They’d been cooking most of their meals on their big Asia trip.

After Ray closed the shop, they cooked at her house their recent staple: vegan somen. Heaps of ginger, carrot, garlic, mushrooms, tofu, pok choi, and noodles. With a tahini-like sesame paste and soy sauce, I savored every contact with my taste buds.

Ray was beaming the entire time. She seemed genuinely happy to have invited us, hang out with us, and learn about veganism.

“You’re leaving tomorrow?!” she exclaimed after I reminded her of my schedule. “It’s too early! You can stay here as long as you like.”

Funnily enough, the host she’d actually reminded me of was the Seoul painter. The latter had said the same, hosted me for five weeks, and radiated all day.

Dessert was the carrot cake. Night and day compared to the one in Israel. With a kick of lemon, it was perfectly astringent.

An interesting realization hit me while going to bed. I was no longer thinking around the clock about a couple of people who, since meeting them in the last few months, had taken over my brain.

From unrequired feelings and a harrowing obsession, to the quiet admittance that the happy video of us together was now a picture. How come I was slowly closing the photo album in my head? This whole time, I was certain this would never happen.

I felt lighter, but also jealous of Ray and her ex.

Today’s highlights: Ray’s desserts at the event; vegan somen and carrot cake for dinner.

6 December 2023

• 15:45-15:52 Higashiyama station to Yamashina station metro (Tozai line), 16:00-18:40 transfer to Himeji station (Tokaido Sanyo line)

Farewell to Kyoto

I slept solid nine hours and woke with Ray and the couchsurfing couple late. Thanks to yesterday’s lucrative event, Ray took it easy this morning as well. We finished the carrot cake for breakfast and, for lunch, baked the most incredible apple crumble at Cloud Café.

A myriad of topics came up during our hours-long conversations. Veganism, food, pollution, selfishness, love, religion, war, capitalism, family, cryptocurrency, spiritualism.

“I’ve never had a couchsurfing experience like this,” Ray beamed. After a string of couch-surfers who had stayed in one of her private rooms and made little conversation, she could gush about her passions. Moreover, we shared them.

The four of us got along so well, that with the couple and I leaving today, Ray seemed a bit sad.

Talking to the couple while she was hard at work at the teahouse felt engrossing, despite her absence. We saw the world using very similar lens. Discussing deep matters over divine (and vegan) baked goods made me cancel my sightseeing plans: because I wasn’t particularly interested in the temple I’d missed in Himeji my first time there, because my right foot was still bruised, and because I simply wanted to.

As I’d written on April 15: “The friends you made and food you ate mattered no less than the places you visited.”

After postponing my departure time again and again, I finally left with a belly full of apple crumble, and a promise to reunite with Ray in Christmas.

Himeji

Three hours of slow trains later, I checked into my hostel in Himeji.

Tonight’s only guests were a French guy and girl, a Japanese guy, and a Taiwanese girl. All of us immediately socialized on tatami mats. The French guy, who hadn’t eaten dinner yet, joined me in recreating my previous dinner at a restaurant here: champon-yaki (a local variant of okonomiyaki) and cheese mochi doro-yaki (onion omelet), two Himeji specialties.

We talked a lot about ourselves. Too much, even. Oodles of information kept oozing, because we got along so well, until I found myself repeating conversations I’d made countless of times on this trip.

Was this what dating on a regular basis felt like? I enjoyed acquainting with a new person whose attitude I appreciated, but also felt a bit weary. Meeting people was great. Established connections were better.

When a person reduced you from the focus of their lens to a speck in the back, what could you do – wait for them to fix their camera, or seal the album and put it away?

Throughout the fantastic dinner with the French guy, and later during a group hang out around the tatami inside the hostel, it occurred to me that, as long as I was surrounded by people who company I enjoyed, I focused less on people whose company I missed.

I didn’t want to move on. But what other option did I have. My train of thought was going full speed ahead, as tumultuous as my ten months of travel.

It was okay, though. No need to say it…

Today’s highlights: carrot cake for breakfast; apple crumble for lunch; Himeji specialties for dinner.