It’s interesting to me, that from time to time I’m hit with an odd and indescribable feeling. It is somewhere in the neighborhood of nostalgia, but it’s not quite there. Nostalgia, I think, tends to be a longing for a certain place in a certain time that has happened. The feeling I get is much like nostalgia, but it’s for a time that never happened in a place that never really existed. It’s not uncomfortable. And it’s not sad or depressing. It’s just a sense of, perhaps, being connected to a place and time that you were never connected to.
I felt it vividly at the Fushimi Inari temple complex in Kyoto Japan. Kyoto, itself, feels disconnected from time and space actually. Upon arrival in Kyoto from Tokyo, you immediately notice things are a bit different. The pace is a bit less frenetic than Tokyo. Not slow, mind you, just not the break-neck “forward at all costs” pace of Tokyo.
When you take the bullet train, known in local parlance as the “shinkansen” (pronounced sheen-khan-sehn with no particular accent on any one syllable) from Toyko to Kyoto station, you are greeted with a large, modern, and thoroughly confusing station. The interesting thing about Kyoto station for me was, there was a distinct lack of romanized signage. It was a large, dark, massive complex with no discernible way out. I’d never felt panic or nervousness on the entire trip to Japan, but here, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps English isn’t as widely spoken as it is in Tokyo. And it wasn’t. So the first order of business was to figure out how the hell to get out of the damned train station. Make no mistake, being stuck in a Japanese train station isn’t really a terrible thing. They’re very nice, very clean, and very orderly. They are full of good spots to eat and drink… You could conceivably live in one were you so monied. They are also jam packed full of people going every which way and they all know exactly where they are going.
The world over, the most annoying thing to a local in ANY major metropolitan area is the bumbling tourist lost in the shuffle and fucking up the flow. You see, in all commuting cultures there’s a flow… If you aim to travel to a major urban center and use public transit, familiarize yourself with the flow… Watch it from a far at first. See how and where people rush. Watch the intersections where people’s paths meet. Once you see how the people flow, DO NOT MESS IT UP! Go with the flow. Keep moving forward. If your destination is going past you, just go past it and get out of the flow. Rejoin the flow that’s going to your destination. But by all means DO NOT FUCK UP THE FLOW! Trust me, this is as true in Japan as it is in Chicago. So I followed the flow of people and eventually found myself A.) above ground and B.) outside. It was a chilly, damp, and slightly drizzly day outside at around 11am local time. It was also decidedly modern looking. Here’s a shot of a parking lot just outside the station.
Now on foot and largely unable, but actually more unwilling, to decode the bus system, I decided that I would simply start walking toward somewhere. I chose the mountain. It seemed so close and it seemed also logical that I would find what I was seeking closer to mountains. What was I seeking? Temples and castles and history and spirituality. So, I just started walking toward the mountain. Not sure where I was going, but sure it was the right direction. I came upon a river after a mile or so. 
The river was quite wide but not particularly fast… Continuing on my way, the town started to get a different vibe. Things started to feel a bit older and I finally made my way into some tight streets that seemed to be building to…. Something.
It turns out that “something” was the Fushimi Inari Temple.
The temple complex is pretty huge. There’s a trail up the mountain to the actual shrine. It’s fairly famous for its myriad of orange tori gates.
There is a certain magical quality to temples and shrines like this, but particularly in Kyoto. It’s very calm and very quiet, aside from the sounds of tourists. In areas where the crowds would thin out all you could hear was the wind, the water flowing in a stream, and the birds squawking in the sky. I will always hold a special place in my heart for the one place on earth where I felt so connected yet so alone and so happy. I’ll be back again some day soon…
