I apologise for the delay to this blog. The first three days in Japan have taught me many interesting and useful phrases, such as 'I spilt a matcha latte on it', 'Your motherboard is fried', 'You say it'll cost how much to repair it?!' and 'Thank you, the meal was delicious'. I'm typing this from my iPad in the comfort zone halfway between the cryptlike air conditioning of my room and the wet-hand-towel heat of the balcony outside. It is twenty minutes to midnight. Kyoto is not quite asleep.
Although - and surprisingly for such a large city - it does sink into a profound silence in the middle of the evenings. We had dinner in a traditional-style restaurant in the Gion quarter tonight; at 7.15 the dusk was already outlining the low humped roofs of the machiya houses and the lamps were coming on. At ten past ten the stone-paved streets were silent. What Kyoto shares with Oxford - perhaps why I find it so pleasant - is a smiling but firm sense of systems of privacy. The old city invites the admiration of tourists and thrives on their flattery even as it slides shut outer walls, screens the engawa verandahs, and permits doorways in walls which display a mastery of the art of architectural striptease, revealing only a small shrine, only a pine tree. Streets shoot off of main roads like shafts of light, each one worth years of investigation.
The concept of a backwards striptease, exciting the viewers by putting on layers of clothes, could as well apply to Kyoto's inhabitants - or more precisely Gion's inhabitants, or most precisely maiko and geisha. We encountered a scene in Hanamikoji (Cherry-blossom Viewing Alley) earlier; a young maiko, probably fifteen or sixteen, was being photographed for a magazine spread. She was wearing a cho-obi (the kind which hangs down the wearer's back like a long tail) painted with an image of a Gion-matsuri carriage; the professional photographer's assistants waved their arms and shouted, forbidding anyone else from taking pictures. Body language is a) something I struggle to read and b) extremely fluid across cultures, especially c) amongst people who are polite and charming for a living, but even her sleeves looked annoyed as she picked up the skirt of her kimono for the fifth time and posed where pointed. As we passed her on the bridge, the press cordon broken to let us through, she bowed and smiled slightly and returned to leaning on its barrier. What struck me about the scene was not her beauty, although she was beautiful, and was not the fetishistic pleasure of seeing a real live maiko out and about (as one of my housemates had declared in wonder earlier, on seeing a middle-aged lady in a neat yukata in Sanjo-dori: "Wow, that was my first person I ever saw in kimono!"). It was the sense of sly happiness I feel every time the world displays its sleights of hand with a certain lack of guile; the scaffolding of publicity that holds up what remains of the Floating World, or the lady who runs a spice shop in Gion and, when I was photographing her shop, made sure to remove her glasses and cheerily hold up a leaflet for her shop as I took her picture.
Canny ladies, canny city. And I met a cat stretched out on a hot garage floor who was limp and inert as I passed, but then stuck up its head and posed expectantly until I took its close-up. I saw the Minami-za Kabuki theatre from a distance and rattled the bell at the temple of Susano-no-wo-no-Mikoto and ate the creamed-off scum of tofu paste prepared in three different ways. My housemates (the three youngest and nicest) have embraced my pronouns with no fuss whatsoever, culminating in the hilarious remark 'We can't look too much like idiot American tourists! Lyman's from Britain, he has dignity.'
Kyoto has been interesting, so far.
Although - and surprisingly for such a large city - it does sink into a profound silence in the middle of the evenings. We had dinner in a traditional-style restaurant in the Gion quarter tonight; at 7.15 the dusk was already outlining the low humped roofs of the machiya houses and the lamps were coming on. At ten past ten the stone-paved streets were silent. What Kyoto shares with Oxford - perhaps why I find it so pleasant - is a smiling but firm sense of systems of privacy. The old city invites the admiration of tourists and thrives on their flattery even as it slides shut outer walls, screens the engawa verandahs, and permits doorways in walls which display a mastery of the art of architectural striptease, revealing only a small shrine, only a pine tree. Streets shoot off of main roads like shafts of light, each one worth years of investigation.
The concept of a backwards striptease, exciting the viewers by putting on layers of clothes, could as well apply to Kyoto's inhabitants - or more precisely Gion's inhabitants, or most precisely maiko and geisha. We encountered a scene in Hanamikoji (Cherry-blossom Viewing Alley) earlier; a young maiko, probably fifteen or sixteen, was being photographed for a magazine spread. She was wearing a cho-obi (the kind which hangs down the wearer's back like a long tail) painted with an image of a Gion-matsuri carriage; the professional photographer's assistants waved their arms and shouted, forbidding anyone else from taking pictures. Body language is a) something I struggle to read and b) extremely fluid across cultures, especially c) amongst people who are polite and charming for a living, but even her sleeves looked annoyed as she picked up the skirt of her kimono for the fifth time and posed where pointed. As we passed her on the bridge, the press cordon broken to let us through, she bowed and smiled slightly and returned to leaning on its barrier. What struck me about the scene was not her beauty, although she was beautiful, and was not the fetishistic pleasure of seeing a real live maiko out and about (as one of my housemates had declared in wonder earlier, on seeing a middle-aged lady in a neat yukata in Sanjo-dori: "Wow, that was my first person I ever saw in kimono!"). It was the sense of sly happiness I feel every time the world displays its sleights of hand with a certain lack of guile; the scaffolding of publicity that holds up what remains of the Floating World, or the lady who runs a spice shop in Gion and, when I was photographing her shop, made sure to remove her glasses and cheerily hold up a leaflet for her shop as I took her picture.
Canny ladies, canny city. And I met a cat stretched out on a hot garage floor who was limp and inert as I passed, but then stuck up its head and posed expectantly until I took its close-up. I saw the Minami-za Kabuki theatre from a distance and rattled the bell at the temple of Susano-no-wo-no-Mikoto and ate the creamed-off scum of tofu paste prepared in three different ways. My housemates (the three youngest and nicest) have embraced my pronouns with no fuss whatsoever, culminating in the hilarious remark 'We can't look too much like idiot American tourists! Lyman's from Britain, he has dignity.'
Kyoto has been interesting, so far.
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