Another overseas birthday tradition of sorts is pestering cousins abroad (see: Vienna, but also: the Filipino diaspora) and version 2018 followed suit – this time with Cousin S, who was nice enough to take time out of his academic schedule and show the tourist around… Kyoto Station!
I did not think the shiny, gargantuan complex would be an attraction in itself, but there is a playful, elevated little garden, the vistas are impressive and if you emerge on the ground floor of the astounding atrium and look up, the escalators seem like they float into the infinite sky.
Now, I don’t hang out with many scientists (unless you count the Big Bang Theory family or the USS Discovery crew on Star Trek) so it was really quite fascinating to find myself in a conversation about seafloor mapping (sorry, Cousin S, I know you had to dumb it down a bit), which was a topic I never had cause to seriously consider until then.
Interspersed between the science bits were insights on the Italian Risorgimento versus the Meiji Restoration (similar time frame, Cousin S commented, which is a fact, overlapping periods, actually, and holy shiz I did not think of that but now I can’t stop thinking about it and how so much of the world was changing then), how cities take on a character of their own, and monolithic perceptions of Japan (um, probably mine because I’m basic).
All this, over okonomiyaki and yakisoba on a proper teppan, followed by coffee and cheesecake at Inoda’s Coffee, clearly beloved of locals.
It was a really rather lovely way to end my Kyoto holiday, and I set off on the train back to Osaka thinking that even if it took me hours to locate my flat (the host was terribly uncommunicative), at least I wouldn’t starve for a few hours.
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