BUYING HAPPINESS IN KYOTO
February 15th 2009 12:27
It was difficult waking up; the crazy night before and all the alcohol had finally caught up to the both of us. But we had to wake up early – we were only in Kyoto for two nights. I groaned and threw the alarm against a wall. It bounced back and hit my forehead so I punched it, but it was a solid bastard so it hurt the hell out of me and I winced in pain. Trevor laughed.
I stumbled downstairs to put the laundry in the communal washing machine while Trevor talked to the owner of the hostel. There’s a lot of trust in Japan; almost nothing gets stolen. We were required to leave our keys on the front desk with everyone else’s keys for the whole day until we returned, and the guy who owned the hostel thought it was completely normal ("But we ourselves steal things all the time!" we kept telling him). Trevor and I finally agreed to leave our keys there, said goodbye to him, opened the door and walked into the cold; we were both wearing thick coats and scarves kindly given to us by Takkun and we huddled ourselves against ourselves. I smiled at all the small trucks that passed us by; unlike the mammoth trucks in Australia, the trucks in Japan were small, compact, cute. I liked them.
“Alright, Dean,” Trevor told me, pointing at the tourist map, “we are in the famously historical and scenic part of Japan. Brace yourself for an amazing day, brother.”
We walked to a bus station and waited for a bus to the Arashiyama area because it was the cheapest place to get to. We hopped onto the packed bus and stood, squeezing against everyone, in silence. Like all packed places, there was a crying baby. I never understood why every packed place had to have a crying baby.
Kyoto has a lot of temples and shrines and is famous for having a lot of temples and shrines. Because it is famous it is filled with tourists both from within Japan and around the world: school kids marched around everywhere lead by a worried person with a giant flag, groups and groups of people – families, couples, friends – walked around while huddling and taking photos and asking people to take their photos for them. Because there were a lot of people there were a lot of stores. Right next to the temples were countless stores selling food and souvenirs and everything else that will make them more money. Trevor and I soon came to realise that all the temples we passed by required an entry fee, like they were some kind of tourist attraction or theme park. I cursed it all to hell.
“Chill, Dean,” Trevor reassured me, “I’m sure they’re just maintenance fees.”
But the countless tourists – which I know included Trevor and I – and the endless stores ruined the enigma for me. There was one store that even sold the word “happiness” carved in a piece of wood for fife hundred yen.
“At least they’re direct about it,” Trevor said. “Rather than hiding the fact that the real reason we buy our BMWs and fancy clothes and drinks is to cure our depression, they say it straight up: ‘Look, if you want happiness, here, you can buy it.’”
I half laughed. I wanted to find some place new and undiscovered, but I realised that searching Google and inspecting a tourist map didn’t help at all. So I told Trevor, Let’s get out of all these stores and cameras and just walk.
We walked and walked, we walked passed a hill of stores and another hill of stores and passed a mountain walkway filled with stores. Eventually the store fronts and tourist entrances started to be replaced by green. We found a semi-secluded hill; the ground was littered with violet and pinkish and yellow flowers. It was quiet and foggy, and as we walked farther, deeper, we found a wooden and rusty home that looked hundreds of years old. We looked through it for a while, picking antiques up and admiring them until we heard someone inside a room yell and a dog bark.
“I can’t believe someone lives there!” Trevor panted as we kept running.
A few hours later we were well into a mountain. We were lost but we kept climbing higher. In those moments of trudging and pushing through leaves and hearing my shoes complain and erode and feeling myself climb higher than wind and bits of sky and having my thoughts fall backwards down where I did not look back made me incredibly happy, so happy that I laughed and Trevor didn’t have to ask me what was so funny because he understood, he was happy too. Our sweat poured and left us and we found ourselves climbing over everything that was wrong. At the end of it all we peered out into some light and found ourselves at a lookout at the very top of the universe, and from our view we could see more mountains and trees and a river and did not realise anything new, did not think anything new, did not understand anything new, did not regret anything new. It was a moment, but that moment was there: I smiled and accepted the world for what it was.
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Comment by Postmodern Critic
Postmodern Critic
Relativity Watch
Padsoc
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
I am left laughing too by that magnificent view, and the air smells so good :-0
..thank you for climbing there.
L.
Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen
I hope you do keep writing. It can be a damn life saver sometimes!!!!
Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen
thank the mountains for being there to climb
BTW I got myself a small notebook to start writing them dream notes!