methrowrock (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
methrowrock) wrote2010-07-03 03:17 am
methrowrock) wrote2010-07-03 03:17 am
Entry tags:
dream chimneys
And before you know it, July rolls around once again, knocking temperamental June out of the way. There is something hopeful and depressing about July all at the same time. Hopeful, because there are still six glorious months before the next year. Depressing, because, well, six months have flown past just like that, Addamsfamily*snapsnap*. My long-awaited-for Japan trip took its own sweet time to arrive, but streaked past in a blur. My nineteenth birthday came and went, and nope, the anticipated enlightenment did not arrive and I am still as lost as ever. My university application has finally been settled, so hello there NUS for the next three or four years. First experiences, milestones, big decisions: everything seems so mild and diluted by the fluidity of time. Or maybe it is just my heart stiffening inside, like veiny leather from a lack of use. Either way, life seems underwhelming, unimpressive and un...wow when aided with the lofty view of hindsight. But during the days itself, it was a different story altogether.
The fifteen days from 25th May 2010 to 8th June 2010 was a period when I lived the life I had always dreamt of living. It was as real as it could get. Sitting on a bullet train to the pulsating, bustling city of Tokyo on the very first day after touching down in Fukuoka. that WAS happening. Days, months and years ahead, that memory,- of sitting on the scratchy green seats, bending knees at an awkward angle and continually knocking against suitcases, peering out the window and seeing rolling hills of green, electricity lines sweeping the edge of the horizon, and feeling the calm of hurtling towards your next destination, with so much explore and to discover,- will still belong to me, locked within my vault of treasured moments. I couldn't be happier.
Tokyo was simply amazing. DisneySea, DisneyLand, Asakusa, Hamamatsucho, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, Ueno, Odaiba. I love the city, the bright lights, the never-ending stream of people, the surprising good intentions, the scarcely-masked impatience, the steady clip-clop down wide and clean streets, the weather that always seemed to be nipping our faces with chilly winds, the feeling that you could wear or do anything and almost get away with it, the people and their sharp sense of style, the sense of rightful purpose that everybody seems to brandish, the train systems, the clockwork regularity, the foreignness and newness of it all. Everyday was an adventure, everything was a eureka!discovery; I liked that: being amazed by the small sights and ordinary items around on the streets. I ate a melon bread for the first time in Asakusa, and finally realised why Shana (from Shakugan no Shana) was so insistent on eating hers whole. I walked along Harajuku, wondered how many more people they could squeeze in the nooks and crannies and escaped to the broad tree-lined walkways of Cat Street, place of the beautifully decorated shops and quirky-quaint niches. I fell in and out of love with people on the streets within seconds. I stood in the middle of the Shibuya crossing, in the midst of the crush of people north-south-east-west, and realised under the constellation of street lights that I could never be a part of this, that I would never be able to make it as a starspeckle in this metropolis of glaring lights, and that made me sad for about twenty seconds, until I reached the other side and the waves of people receded and my life was unpaused. I rowed a boat to the middle of a pond and saw the ivorydown of seagulls contrasted against emeraldwaters and ceruleanskies and thought that nature is beautiful(=life is wonderful). I gazed out at the night skyline of Tokyo, dappled with golden and silver pinpricks and lights of all the colours that you could think of, and remembered that life is temporal, but today, tonight is forever.
Kyoto, Osaka, Onomichi and Fukuoka were splendid as well. More exploring, more adventuring, more wandering around, more running into this and stumbling onto that. The accidental tourists. Walking in the backstreets, utility lines criss-crossing and making white-and-blue waffles of the skies, ivy-covered granite gates, dusty family plaques, pristine vending machines with colourful bottles, oh, it was as Japanese as it could get, because that was that. It is hard to explain, but I was bursting from "OMG! that's just like..." and "hey! that seems like.." and felt infinitely happy doing so. Onomichi was one of my favourite places. I loved the deserted castle atop the hill. I loved the small ramen stalls. I loved the rural feel of the town. I loved the islands. I loved the Kosanji temple and Miraishin no Oka. I loved cycling up and down the long gravel road of Ikuchijima. I loved how laidback and breezy everything felt. It was freedom at its finest: freedom from the people you know, freedom from the lifestyle you know, freedom from the knowledge you know. You could just BE, and breathe, breathe, breathe. There were a couple of times during the trip when we forsook taking the bus back to the train stations and weaved our way back slowly throgh the meandering avenues. Watching the high school students cycle home, the suited businessmen take their brisk, measured steps, the florists with cute aprons adjust their brilliant flowers... they were real people, living out their real lives that will always be vastly different from yours, and it is hard to remember that on vacation, when your life routine has been momentarily suspended in a state of sort-of hyper-reality. Fukuoka was more or less a gradual return to reality. And like all good things, the days in Japan had to come to an end. But oh wow, I am going to find a way back there someday, somehow. :)
And because it is late, and because I am tired, this entry shall end awkwardly with an excerpt from the book I'm currently reading: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I love talk-y, ramble-y books with sentences that go on and on and on and Oskar breaks my heart every single time. Till another time!
The fifteen days from 25th May 2010 to 8th June 2010 was a period when I lived the life I had always dreamt of living. It was as real as it could get. Sitting on a bullet train to the pulsating, bustling city of Tokyo on the very first day after touching down in Fukuoka. that WAS happening. Days, months and years ahead, that memory,- of sitting on the scratchy green seats, bending knees at an awkward angle and continually knocking against suitcases, peering out the window and seeing rolling hills of green, electricity lines sweeping the edge of the horizon, and feeling the calm of hurtling towards your next destination, with so much explore and to discover,- will still belong to me, locked within my vault of treasured moments. I couldn't be happier.
Tokyo was simply amazing. DisneySea, DisneyLand, Asakusa, Hamamatsucho, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, Ueno, Odaiba. I love the city, the bright lights, the never-ending stream of people, the surprising good intentions, the scarcely-masked impatience, the steady clip-clop down wide and clean streets, the weather that always seemed to be nipping our faces with chilly winds, the feeling that you could wear or do anything and almost get away with it, the people and their sharp sense of style, the sense of rightful purpose that everybody seems to brandish, the train systems, the clockwork regularity, the foreignness and newness of it all. Everyday was an adventure, everything was a eureka!discovery; I liked that: being amazed by the small sights and ordinary items around on the streets. I ate a melon bread for the first time in Asakusa, and finally realised why Shana (from Shakugan no Shana) was so insistent on eating hers whole. I walked along Harajuku, wondered how many more people they could squeeze in the nooks and crannies and escaped to the broad tree-lined walkways of Cat Street, place of the beautifully decorated shops and quirky-quaint niches. I fell in and out of love with people on the streets within seconds. I stood in the middle of the Shibuya crossing, in the midst of the crush of people north-south-east-west, and realised under the constellation of street lights that I could never be a part of this, that I would never be able to make it as a starspeckle in this metropolis of glaring lights, and that made me sad for about twenty seconds, until I reached the other side and the waves of people receded and my life was unpaused. I rowed a boat to the middle of a pond and saw the ivorydown of seagulls contrasted against emeraldwaters and ceruleanskies and thought that nature is beautiful(=life is wonderful). I gazed out at the night skyline of Tokyo, dappled with golden and silver pinpricks and lights of all the colours that you could think of, and remembered that life is temporal, but today, tonight is forever.
Kyoto, Osaka, Onomichi and Fukuoka were splendid as well. More exploring, more adventuring, more wandering around, more running into this and stumbling onto that. The accidental tourists. Walking in the backstreets, utility lines criss-crossing and making white-and-blue waffles of the skies, ivy-covered granite gates, dusty family plaques, pristine vending machines with colourful bottles, oh, it was as Japanese as it could get, because that was that. It is hard to explain, but I was bursting from "OMG! that's just like..." and "hey! that seems like.." and felt infinitely happy doing so. Onomichi was one of my favourite places. I loved the deserted castle atop the hill. I loved the small ramen stalls. I loved the rural feel of the town. I loved the islands. I loved the Kosanji temple and Miraishin no Oka. I loved cycling up and down the long gravel road of Ikuchijima. I loved how laidback and breezy everything felt. It was freedom at its finest: freedom from the people you know, freedom from the lifestyle you know, freedom from the knowledge you know. You could just BE, and breathe, breathe, breathe. There were a couple of times during the trip when we forsook taking the bus back to the train stations and weaved our way back slowly throgh the meandering avenues. Watching the high school students cycle home, the suited businessmen take their brisk, measured steps, the florists with cute aprons adjust their brilliant flowers... they were real people, living out their real lives that will always be vastly different from yours, and it is hard to remember that on vacation, when your life routine has been momentarily suspended in a state of sort-of hyper-reality. Fukuoka was more or less a gradual return to reality. And like all good things, the days in Japan had to come to an end. But oh wow, I am going to find a way back there someday, somehow. :)
And because it is late, and because I am tired, this entry shall end awkwardly with an excerpt from the book I'm currently reading: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I love talk-y, ramble-y books with sentences that go on and on and on and Oskar breaks my heart every single time. Till another time!