21 FEB 99

Half-Life at the Little Udon

Kyoto contains a Y, 2 ‘o’s and a K. I guess the t stands for Time-bomb.

It's frightening. Absolutely frightening, I tell you. There are just too many coincidences for this to be the result of random chance. Could it be Nature's revenge upon us for monkeying around with existence? If we had merely enjoyed existence for what it is, instead of arbitrarily assigning numbers to spans of time and counting them, cataloging them, and calculating them, we would never have gotten to the year 2000, much less any year at all! The problem is within ourselves, and we project it upon the universe, molding it into the image of ourselves; our problems.

Had you going there for a bit? Huh? Huh?

Actually, there was this dyslexic emperor who lived in Tokyo, but thought it was Kyoto - and that's why the capital of Japan was moved.

Shuffled again, we get a phonetic version of cute. How kyoot. Or a so-so Mattel product: ok toy. Or Milton-Bradley's Kooty. So, where am I going?

Well, there's a light drizzle as I wake up, but it clears up within an hour. Kyoto, here I come. I go to the JR Station. One sign says Tracks 7, 8, 9, and 10 go to Kyoto. The stairway leading up to the platform between 7 and 8 says Kyoto, while the one between 9 and 10 is in Kanji only.

Security up one stair, mystery up the other - which way would Robert Frost choose? This tourist takes the safe way. The first train that pulls up says Kyoto in the little windows on the side so I get in. About seven stops later, after three other trains have rattled our windows in their passing wake, I begin to realize that I'm on the local. I bear my punishment with pride - and ride it out to the end. Well, at least to Kyoto Station.

Even seeing it now for the second time, this station is awesome. It's a cavernous space that celebrates people in motion. Escalators ascend in strung-up sequential sets rather than in stacks - The top of each escalator is but a couple steps from the bottom of the next. The ascent to space (heaven?) is in multi-storied lines. Unlike the supposedly conventional wisdom of theme park planning, there is no weenie at the top, only the sky; a void - and the people at the top appear to just drop into its nothingness. Columbus didn't see a weenie. He saw the edge of the earth. He was a moth and he saw the light. I had seen Tracks 9 and 10, but hadn't wanted to risk getting zapped.

I know I have to catch a north-south train, whose station is directly under the JR Station. I hunt around and finally find it. I descend, board, and count the stops to my exit. It's a long, long stairway up to Imadegawa-dori. There's a university here, readily determined by the young people wearing grunge, and the makeshift banners in front undoubtedly protesting the failure of the rest of society to comprehend the sensitivity of the students. A block to the south gets me to the perimeter of my destination, the grounds of the Imperial Palace.

The park is some 1200m x 750m. It has mostly grass and trees, with formally laid out pedestrian ways. A handful of traditionally gated entries provide access to the grounds. There appear to be very few people about. The fact that the sky has clouded back over and an occasional snowflake is finding its way to earth may have something to do with it. I enter and am greeted by music filtering through a grove on my left. It’s a brass quartet playing some jazz standards and rags. I decide to leave it a mystery and proceed inward.

The few people that are in the park are invariably being towed about by Akitas and other husky-like dogs. So these are the Imperial Pooping Grounds.

Ahead of me I see the wall the surrounds the palace compound. It marches in a perfect rectangle some 500m x 250m x 6m high. It has an entry gate on each short end, and two on the longer sides. It is lined on all sides with a graveled causeway some 20 to 30 meters wide.

I proceed to crunch through the gravel down the long west side. After rattling pebbles for the length of a football field, I come to the first gate. The gate has timber doors that happen to be shut. I continue along the wall for the length of two more football fields. The second gate on this side is as welcoming to me as the first. I am undeterred. I continue south, despite the fact that global warming has changed the snowfall to a light sprinkle. I reach the south end and head east until I reach the main gate in the middle. Its closed condition just goes to reinforce my premonition that something was not quite right with the picture - which happened to contain several construction cranes within the compound. Thanks for letting me know the place is closed, guys.

There's a peculiar phenomena which seems to have reduced the gravel in a very thin line along the palace wall. The "Ching-ching!" of a bell behind me quickly leads to the conclusion that bikes are the cause. I step out of the way. I continue east to be greeted with closed gates at the Sento Gosho Palace gardens that adjoin the Imperial Palace. Kyoto extends its welcome to me.

I walk south for a couple of miles and get to downtown. Along the way I spot a stained glass studio. I stop to investigate. The door is open. I step into an anteroom cluttered with packing boxes and a Tiffany-type lamp or two. The door to the workshop is open, but no one is there. I wait five minutes or so, poke around, but see no card. I go back out, jot down the name and number, and continue on.

For lunch, I continue my non-adventurous streak and eat at a place I've gone to before. I would have preferred elsewhere, but my footsies were tired. The place is called Pronto, and it's right above McDonald's on the south side of Shijo-dori, just west of the Kamo-gawa river. Service is where you pick up any pastries you want on a tray with tongs, order your entree and drinks at the counter and pay there as well, and then they bring your counter order to your table. It's cheap but pretty good. I have a tasty pasta with pesto sauce. It's made with butter instead of oil, no parmesan, and the walnuts are broken up on top rather than ground in as a part of the sauce. Ice tea keeps the thirst level down.

I walk east across the bridge to the Gion area. One of the reasons I wanted to come here was that Fergus O'Reilly said there was a crafts center here. The four or five blocks between the Kamo-gawa river and the Yasaka-jinja shrine to the east have sidewalks shaded by an articulated canopy that has been tagged onto the various facades. In its shelter are many craft shops interspersed with Kyoto's equivalent of T-shirt and trinket shops. About midway along the north side there is a larger establishment called the Kyoto Crafts Center that has a better than average cut of goods displayed on three floors. I buy some chopsticks and book about knots. If I don't go to work on Monday, it'll be because I'm either too busy playing walrus, or I'm all tied up.

Almost next door is the Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art. I pay the 1000¥ admission to the fellow sitting at the desk by the door. There are about three works in this lobby. I have to take the elevator to see anything else. I punch 5. The door opens. I'm facing a sheet of glass which separates me from a 2m x 3m rectangle of moss with a tree growing out of it. The roof above the tree is open to the sky. There are two pieces in alcoves on this floor. Back in the elevator, I punch R. It goes up to the roof. The door opens, and I'm in a broom closet with two steps in it that lead up to a door that I presume leads out to the roof. My non-adventuresome self takes over, and decides not to go out.

I punch 3. I get out into one of the larger floors - about 5m x 15m. There's about half a dozen smudged ink on rice paper experiments gracing the walls. I take the open stair down one floor for more of the same. The stairs down to the ground floor are roped off, and the elevator doesn't stop here, so I go back up to 3 and take the elevator down. I walk out. I've spent close to 20 minutes alone in that building. This kind of modern art deserves the kind of attention it is getting.

Why put all this money into something that only an accidental tourist like me is fooled into paying? If "art" wasn't subsidized, then the marketplace of ideas would financially reward those that reward other's minds, feelings, and senses. Instead of a Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art, we would have a Universal Theme Park of Contemporary Art brought to you by the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce. Who needs "art" when you can ride up and down elevators? Or, better yet, fool you into thinking that you are riding up and down elevators.

I decide to leave. I came to get uplifted. Instead I felt ignored, isolated, and foot-sore. I walk back over the bridge, and catch the Hankyu line back to Osaka. Forty minutes later, I'm back in the hotel. It's become my withdrawal cocoon, my escape from the unexpected unpleasantries that life occasionally deals my way. And at the same time it is confining and imprisoning. The moment I'm back, I set about to plan my escape - my next excursion. It's only 4:00 in the afternoon and the sun is back out in force.

About ten blocks from my window is the Umeda Sky building. A vertical counterpart to the Kyoto train station. Back down I go. My feet are too sore to walk far, so I take a cab. Minutes later, there I am, looking up along with everybody else around me. The main building consists of two rectangular office towers, a two story observation deck connecting them at the top. The observation deck has a huge oculus cut into it, with two escalators crossing in between. This building challenges - it asks: Do you dare take this elevator up this narrow glass tube that sits out there detached in space? Do you dare take these escalators across space with nothing but the plaza 40 stories below? I suffer my share of acrophobia - but I take on the challenge.

I take regular escalators up to the third floor and buy a ticket for 700¥. I cross the plaza on a bridge at the same level over to the elevator. I and some 15 others sardine ourselves into one of the two Haboobs (see-through elevators, according to the brochure). The shaft is connected to the building only at two spidery bridges along the glass shaft and at the transfer lobby on the 35th floor. But for a half-meter wide strip on two sides, the rest of the cab walls and doors are glass. Lots of "Ooohs" and "Ahhhs" as we go up.

At the top, we get out, walk around the corner and enter an ascending glass tube housing an escalator that crosses space - lots of space. Lots of nervous titters as everyone steps out. I'm surprised by how little squeamishness I feel. Despite the glass, there's lots of overdesigned steel, so that if you look up the tube, it seems solid. Everything feels totally rigid and without vibration. I reach the top, where the 39th floor souvenir shop is set up. There's a restaurant and a lounge here as well. I take the escalator up to the next floor. This is the main observation floor, with a snack shop and a bit of a gallery as well. While light pours into the observatory, the gallery seems to be in total darkness - since it is a sort of slow moving light show involving 25 music stands.

I walk up to the roof. It's about an hour to sunset, and cooling down. Fortunately, it's breezy but not windy. It's slowly starting to cloud over again, causing shafts of light to illuminate parts of the city below in a changing pattern. A shaft hits Osaka Castle's gleaming white walls as the area behind it darkens in the oncoming clouds. On the other side, the glancing rays create an opal iridescence on the river next to Universal's site, silhouetting the giant Ferris wheel by the aquarium. Great views with spectacular lighting.

And then a gong rings out - an electronic one from two giant concealed speaker clusters. Slow booming music emanates much like the piece during the light show at the WTC atrium. And with the music, mist is spewed out from under the walkway with a surrounding hiss, limiting the views for several minutes.

Why can't the view be simply appreciated for what it is on its own terms? Why must the experience be filtered or modulated by the intrusion of someone else? Must every garden be manicured to the teeth? Why bonsai? Perhaps, the culture is more social, more mutually assuring. I see many cafes/restaurants with maybe six seats at a counter - with everyone talking and warming to each other, like friends or family. I see meetings where consensus is more important that correctness, where mutual approval is more real that facts. The human hand is seen as the sign of socialization and is more welcome here. I'm more comfortable with detachment, isolation, individualism.

I work my way back down and out the building. At the basement level are the ever-present cafes. Here there is a very good reproduction of the very tight pedestrian streets - as little as a meter wide. This is the "Main Street" part of the "park". Outside, in a circular depression in the plaza above, is a wooded forest with a rushing stream and a bit of a path. Quite a contrast, the almost natural feel of the spot, with the very high-tech tower with its spiderwork of bridges terminates the view between the leafy branches.

Across the JR track is the Hankyu Station and the Hankyu International Hotel. On the way there, the driver tells me this is the premier hotel in Osaka. It too is about 40 stories and quite modern in appearance. Inside, it's a disappointment. It's done up in a very conservative fashion that makes the interior of the Dorothy Chandler seem scandalously modern. The Hilton tends to go that way as well: very modern exterior, but a modestly retro interior. But the contrast cake has to go to the Ritz. Talk about dichotomy!

I go down into the Hankyu's basement cafe section, and there is Buco di Muro (06) 377-5567 with a Japanese and Italian menu. I find it quite good. So good, in fact, that I seem to have swallowed up the memory of what it is that I ate here. I do remember being seated at a center table along a banquette. Nobody was seated at the tables to either side of me until I arose to leave. Maybe the two things are connected in some way.

I work my way back to the Hilton through the underground labyrinth that connects all. I think of the work day coming up tomorrow. I reflect upon the labyrinth of underground agendas that connect aspects and events in the project. Perhaps if they could be seen, then those aspects and events might appear to have logic behind them.

Might.

Yeah.

Udon Saga