Low: The total lack of sleep gained on board and arriving at Kyoto station at 5:40am feeling like there was a kaleidoscope inside my brain.
High: Walking around temple grounds in old Kyoto almost completely alone for an hour, with only the odd monk or gardener around. It was beautiful weather and Kyoto in a different season from the ones I've known. An absolutely pure, traditional Japan that I've rarely seen before.
High: Hanging out with Tom again and wandering out into the stunning valleys outside of Kyoto.
High: Hanging out with Emily in Osaka and her showing me round this crazy city which I hardly know and which feels like an even more higgledy-piggledy version of Tokyo. And the Mono-ha exhibition (which is actually the main reason I came) which was great.
Low: Leaving Emily's room at night to go to the communal bathroom down the hall, putting on my shoes barefoot and half-way down the corridor feeling something a bit funny scratch one of my toes on my right foot. "Oh, maybe it's a shoelace," I think, but deep in the recesses of my mind some primal alarm bell is ringing. I take off the shoe and smack it a couple of times, expecting a small stone. Instead a cockroach falls out.
Oh the wails of horror, disgust and despair that came out of my mouth before I jumped on it with my other foot.
High: Saying fuck it to the night bus, canceling my reservation a couple of days early and getting a 70% refund, then taking the bullet train back to Tokyo and seeing Mt Fuji from the train for the first time. The bullet train is divine and I will never go to Kyoto/Osaka again by any other means. And as the photo below shows, Mt Fuji is still able to appear enigmatic despite being a fuck-off huge volcano.
Low: The ho is still here in the flat when he should have left the day before I got back. Kogo's grandfather died the other day and Kogo had to go back to Kobe to be with his family. The ho is clearly taking advantage of this to be here - he had the look of a child who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar when I got back. It's a shame, because I was just beginning to warm to him before I left. I don't really have the Japanese to launch into the full-on verbal assault that I'd give him if he understood English, so there's a strange atmosphere of stalemate in the apartment. He's tried to be nice but I've just rebuffed it every time which is freaking him out. He assures me that he'll be gone tomorrow. We'll see.
High: Retail therapy. I have sports clothes to go running in. As of tomorrow I will run. Having not run for over six years, it will hurt, but I will run and I will keep running until I get fit enough to start Karate again. Kogo is majorly into Karate and his enthusiasm is exactly what I need to get off my butt and start it again.
High?: Tomorrow? The day the ho goes?
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