A trip to Momak
Jan. 8th, 2006 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHisae and I spend Saturday in Kyoto, attending a presentation at Momak by montage photographer Beate Gutschow and seeing the "German Photography Now" show there.
Osaka to Kyoto is a bit like London to Brighton, a commuter trip you can take in under an hour, for under ten pounds. Such a short trip, though, produces a big change of atmosphere. Kyoto is up in the hills, colder than Osaka (it was snowing when we arrived). There's something spiritual there, with the mountains and the temples, but also a cosmopolitanism (so many gaijin everywhere, and look, here's Mama Zappa, a restaurant David Bowie favoured when he lived here, and which has kept his picture in the window ever since!). There's a real vitality in the narrow streets of Kawaramachi. And so many friends; Sparklig, Joopy, Midori Hirano, Berlin DJ Bym of Bym Music, my Mixi friend Mosko.
We bump into Mosko at the Cafe Independent, and she encourages us to gatecrash a super-boho Kyoto wedding party at which the bride looks to be at least four months pregnant, under layers of white shawls. Sadly we have to tear ourselves away and catch a late train back to Osaka.
Osaka to Kyoto is a bit like London to Brighton, a commuter trip you can take in under an hour, for under ten pounds. Such a short trip, though, produces a big change of atmosphere. Kyoto is up in the hills, colder than Osaka (it was snowing when we arrived). There's something spiritual there, with the mountains and the temples, but also a cosmopolitanism (so many gaijin everywhere, and look, here's Mama Zappa, a restaurant David Bowie favoured when he lived here, and which has kept his picture in the window ever since!). There's a real vitality in the narrow streets of Kawaramachi. And so many friends; Sparklig, Joopy, Midori Hirano, Berlin DJ Bym of Bym Music, my Mixi friend Mosko.
We bump into Mosko at the Cafe Independent, and she encourages us to gatecrash a super-boho Kyoto wedding party at which the bride looks to be at least four months pregnant, under layers of white shawls. Sadly we have to tear ourselves away and catch a late train back to Osaka.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-08 05:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-09 02:24 am (UTC)I've always thought the appropriate American analogy would some hybrid of Berkeley and Boston.
Politically it's always been one of the few strongholds of the JCP , and was always one of the strongest centers of student radicalism, with massive unrest from the early 60's onwards. Kyodai is the nation's #2 university but its graduates tend to be more independent and creative than those of Todai, which trains the beaurocractic elite.
Culturally, true locals are fairly bluestockinged and socially conservative Brahmans, concious of ancestral history: the quiet girl you met the other day can tell you from which Heian-period family she is descended.