FIRST NIGHT IN KYOTO
February 9th 2009 07:45
Our last night in Tokyo was a painful yet electrifying one: we’d consumed too much. Takkun showed us a little table on the street out in the open that sold drugs. The drugs were just there, on the table for sale.
“If you want,” he said, “I can get you something that’s like a try hard LSD.”
“No,” I waved him away. “Alcohol only!”
Trevor was still considering it so I pulled him away.
We were hungry and miserable and happy and hung over and drunk – the hours before that moment were a swirl: we woke up and had beer and breakfast from a vending machine, we headed to Shinjuku and passed a street full of gothic lolitas and Nigerians who kept grabbing our shoulders and pointing at a window in the upper floor of a building somewhere and saying, “You just have to look! You just have to look!” we drank more, Trevor cried so to cheer him up they treated me to an expensive haircut in a Tokyo hairdresser that ended up with me looking more upsetting and offensive than normal, Takkun tried to smoke four cigarettes at once and vomited, we drank more, prostitutes came up to us, pimps came up to us offering men or women, I tried to steal a CD, we brushed our teeth in a McDonald’s bathroom.
Everything was colliding and the world was becoming too blurry so I was glad when we caught our bullet train to Kyoto. We said our goodbyes to Takkun and hopped in and sat down and immediately the world became quiet, it was Trevor and I again, sitting inside a train, back to innocence. Trevor told me that all he wanted to do was paint. He told me that if only he didn’t have to work to pay for his bills and he didn’t have to sleep he’d paint every second of his life. I told him that if we never struggled then we’d never have the need to paint. He told me, But there’s always heartbreak. I nodded at his artistic wisdom and also nodded off to sleep and I dreamt a dream I no longer remember.
We arrived at Kyoto late at night, wiping our eyes. We shuddered amongst our clothes and luggage. It was a lot colder than Osaka or Tokyo. We exited the station, looking at the map to our hostel. We passed by a group of girls our age dancing hip-hop. They glanced at us momentarily before continuing their routine. We walked around for half an our, looking at our map. We were lost.
There was a woman, just leaning against a wall and smoking. She looked middle-aged and friendly, so we asked her for directions. She smiled, looked at the map and thought for a long hard while. She looked around, then back at the map, then back around, muttering. She then told us to follow her to her hotel so she can ask the person at the desk for help. We followed her into her hotel a few blocks away, and she talked to the person at the desk about the map. He gave her directions but she didn’t believe him, so she told us to follow her to her room. We followed her to her room and she closed the door. She told us that we could have her for a certain amount of money. We said no, sprinted to the door and out to the elevator. We were trying to get out of there as quickly as possible but the elevator was taking its time, so we stood there, still, staring at the woman’s door, fearing that she’d come out. Our elevator finally arrived and we got out of there.
We sprinted as fast and far as we could. Eventually, we stopped and tried regaining our breaths. Trevor and I looked at each other and broke up in laughter.
“Why were we so scared?”
And we never found an answer. Eventually we found our hostel. It was run by an extremely friendly looking man in a traditional Japanese outfit; he didn’t speak any English. We went up the small elevator to our small room and our small bathroom. I looked out the window and the hip-hoppers were still dancing outside. I lay on the tatami mat and fell asleep. It was our first night in Kyoto.
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