There's a Subway restaurant on one of
the short little pedestrian streets that cut back and forth between
Kawaramachi and Shinkyougoku. I visited so often the staff learned my
order. Japanese Subway isn't quite as good as Canadian, I'm sorry to
say, but it's still hard to beat a delicious hot sandwich. Plus, it
was located directly across from a Rainbow Karaoke, where we went the
night I met Seven and Hyeong, so while I ate I liked to amuse myself
by watching the incredibly obnoxious promo video loop constantly.
It's just one of a dozen or so places I
took to frequenting in the downtown core area. By the time my year of
study abroad was coming to a close, I knew the place pretty well. The
broad strokes, at least. Here's a place to buy beer. Here's a place
to eat cheaply. Here's a place where you can buy books, and for some
reason also clothing. I had a good understanding of where all the
little oft-ignored shrines were tucked away. I knew where the karaoke
places and the convenience stores were (at intervals of every ten and
two steps, respectively).
This is why it was such a start to
glance down a gap between two buildings and realise – whoa, there's
a couple of people walking around back there. Where are they...? Wait
wait, there's more of them! Are they – is there a bunch of cool
stuff back there?
As soon as I stepped through – it was
really like a doorway – I realised what I'd stumbled upon. There
was a whole goddamned town back here! A whole network of
thoroughfares and switchbacks, wide enough to drive a car through!
Not that you'd want to; you'd forever be getting stuck behind slow
walkers. It was a decidedly pedestrian affair, couples, families, old
dudes, young girls, everybody just going about their business. I
found out that Round1 has a parking lot behind it. OPA has a whole
other storefront I never knew about, and it's every bit as
ostentatious as the one on the street. There were cafes, a small bar,
funky expensive clothing stores, and what might have been a lawyer's
office. Or possibly a yakuza branch office; it's hard to tell at a
glance in Japan.
As I wound my way around, I realised
that I'd seen some of this stuff before, passing between the
aforementioned streets. But it had never occurred to me to look any
farther; like a hopeless Muggle, I'd been totally unaware of the
Diagon Alley that was just out of sight, teeming with life and
interest, if you only knew where it was. And really, it's utterly
amazing that I never discovered it earlier. Perhaps some of you are
reading this and marveling at my density, because you found it on
your very first sweep through downtown. But I was amazed that even
after a year and a half, Kyouto could still be hiding some secrets
right in my territory.
It's one of the (many) reasons I love
cities, actually. I'm an extrovert in the truest sense of the word,
drawing energy from the people around me, so the more of them there
are, the happier I am. Sobriety and mental elbow room be damned! Give
me a crowd. Nature and serenity? Get some concrete and glass in
there! Likewise, you can talk to me all day about familiarity and
sometimes wanting to go where everybody knows your name, but I'd
rather have dynamism. A city is like a lover – so complex and so
deep, you could know them for a lifetime and still have more to
learn.
No comments:
Post a Comment