inside a narrow kissaten on a Shichijo backstreet — green vinyl chairs, a formica counter with two men seated apart, a curtain behind the service area partly drawn; the front window holds the street outside like a framed still, a woman mid-sweep on the far pavement, a man under an awning doing nothing — she is not drinking — the thick ceramic cup sits on its chipped saucer before her, both hands wrapped around it, steam risen and gone; she is watching the man under the awning through the glass
The coffee took four minutes. I counted.
The cup was thick ceramic, the kind that holds heat longer than you expect, and the saucer had a small chip on the left edge that the owner had placed facing away from me. That's a Kyoto thing. The chip still exists. You just don't have to look at it.
ceramic coffee cup, steam still rising, saucer chip turned to the wall
I found the kissaten about twenty minutes after leaving the guesthouse. No real intention. The street had a corner with a warm light at the end of it and I walked toward the light. The chairs were green vinyl, slightly too low. Two men at the counter not talking. A radio somewhere behind the curtain — not music, just voices.
I kept the coat on.
worn stone pavement reflecting a single amber shoplight from the street beyond
I'd arrived into Shichijo in late afternoon, the sky doing that low grey thing where shadows don't quite form. The pavements were wet. Not raining — wet. Everything that flat reflective quality my mother's photographs somehow always had, and I understood for the first time that she wasn't a particularly good photographer. She was just here in this light.
I put my bag on the table and watched the street through the window. A woman swept something dark and wet from a doorstep. A delivery bicycle. A man standing under an awning for no apparent reason who was still there when I left.
The trousers were wrong for rain. I wore them anyway.
a stone staircase ascending into lower Higashiyama, steps worn concave on the left side by decades of single-file traffic; a stone wall to one side mossy at the base, a cedar or hinoki overhead not yet leafed, bare branches crossing the pale sky in a broken grid — she has stopped mid-stair, one foot higher than the other, head turned back and down toward the street below — not looking at anything specific, listening
What I noticed on the walk: the sound of water in a gutter moving fast. Stone steps worn on the left side only. One potted plant outside a gated house with three small blossoms that had already fallen into the pot, petals sitting on soil, going brown at the edges.
terracotta pot, three fallen blossoms face-up on wet soil, petal edges browning
Everyone is here for the trees.
The first coffee was better than it had any reason to be.
a compressed backstreet in lower Higashiyama at dusk — stone pavement sheened with light rain, the wet surface catching the orange rectangle of a single lit shopfront window thirty meters ahead; a delivery bicycle leaned against a dark wall to one side, no rider; the street narrows as it recedes — she has just stepped under the shallow overhang of a closed shop doorway and gone still — not sheltering exactly, just stopped at the edge of the light and the dark
What she wore
day1-scene1
I left the coat buttoned on the train and haven't unbuttoned it since — something about arriving in Kyoto makes you want to stay contained.
day1-scene2
The trousers are too wide to be practical in rain and I wore them anyway — there are worse choices than looking slightly wrong in the right city.
day1-scene3
I put the bag on the table instead of the floor — the coffee hadn't arrived yet and I needed something to look at while I figured out if I was tired or just quiet.