“I’m sick of riding on trains.”
Sorry, dear, we’ve got more to go.
We check out of our Akihabara apartment and drag the luggage to the station. The intention was to have breakfast at one of the Vie de France bakery cafes beneath Yodobashi Camera, but the latter are doing a game launch event right outside the cafe and it’s too loud. So we take away and continue on to Tokyo Station.
Now we are running early and have time to browse the shops. There are some interesting bento and snacks, plus some weird gifts. The strangest is a banana peel gallery, where the peels are arranged to look like primates and humans in action. They were apparently for sale too.
Finally it is time to ride our Hikari Shinkansen service to Kyoto. We eat our bakery products and bento on board as a late breakfast. Again we are fortunate and Mount Fuji is spectacularly clear against a bright blue winter sky.
Further along, the countryside around Maibara is almost snow free, in stark contrast to our last trip through it a few days ago.
Giant Kyoto Station is a bit confusing, but our hotel is close and allows us to check in a bit early. Then we head out for lunch.
Pleasing everyone is difficult. B wants a supermarket, Alex wants Mos Burger. Both want gyoza. Trying to satisfy both, I mistake a sponsored restaurant on Google Maps for the Mos Burger as we head to an Aeon shopping centre on the east side of the station.
No Mos Burger. I get gyoza from Ringer Hut in the food court, trying their champon noodles as well for the first time. Alex ends up ordering some KFC, which is much less greasy than their Australian counterparts.
Next to the food court is a Poppondetta, selling model railway goods and with three layouts for running your own trains. There is also a huge range of gatchapon, anime and Gundam products at adjacent shops. By the time we escape B hasn’t visited the supermarket and we need to get moving.
I initially booked a hotel in Osaka and a 6 PM session at teamLab Osaka Botanical Gardens. I love teamLab’s audiovisual effects and thought the one in Osaka sounded different and interesting.
After discovering that the Thunderbird service is reserved seating only we catch the Special Rapid Service to Osaka Station. It races along, not as fast as a Shinkansen, but still quicker than driving. Then we change to the Subway Midosuji service to Nagai, south of Tennoji.
Nagai is another suburban area off the express line. The park is dominated by the big Yanmar baseball stadium. Signs point visitors the way to the Botanic Gardens and teamLab. People are riding bikes, walking dogs or watching their kids in the playground.
Alex wants an ice cream from a vending machine. He chooses choc chip.
It is 6 PM and dark when we are allowed into the teamLab exhibits.
The teamLab website names and describes each exhibit, beginning with the Avenue of Cypress Trees and the Resonating Trees.
Our previous teamLab experiences have all been indoors. In the Botanic Gardens, they paints their palette of light and sound on outdoor nature, enhancing the experience, overlaying mystical stories, theirs, ours, on the landscape.
My story begins with the flow of a magical light energy singing through the forest. Translucent eggs suddenly appear, containing the light within, sounding bells with touch. They grow, the light solidifying within. The sea of another dimension and the forest merge, waves of light touching the trees. Ghostly pilgrims appear, strange beings, animal spirits and their fire wakes the eggs, hatching into tentacles that wave at the sky, touching, laying their eggs of light in the reeds, in the water, feeding on the power of alternate dimensions to begin a new cycle of light and life.
Ambient music floats through the trees, colours change, patterns wash over the forest and structures. The animal spirits from teamLab Borderless appear walking through the trees and I am delighted to see them again. It is like a psychedelic dream.
If not for the cold, I wouldn’t want to leave. I feel like each teamLab exhibit offers something new and this is very true for the Osaka Botanic Gardens.
After almost two hours we head out, stop at a Life supermarket and buy extra lives, or at least chocolate, fruit and the sundries that B wanted from a supermarket earlier in the day.
Mochi doughnuts from a Mister Donut shop and, a bit further along, a Mos Burger! Shrimp burgers for dinner. That was Alex satisfied.
Patience is a virtue.
Rather than the subway, we walk across to Nagai Station on the Hanwa Line. The station is skipped by express services, which whoosh past the narrow platforms, but a local train takes us three stops to Tennoji. From there we can catch a Haruka Express straight to Kyoto. There’s a train I’ll have far too much experience with this trip, but it’s always nice to see the night vignettes out the window, to imagine being part of their stories.
Back at our hotel, removing our yukata, we wash away the 2°C chill with a bath in the onsen, its hot water pumped from 920 metres below.
A couple of Cantonese men talk loudly, making it less relaxing than it should be.
I’ve paid extra for a combination Western-Japanese room tonight and will be sleeping on the futon on the tatami. The other two, in their Western beds, think I’ll be the one suffering. No, I want to sleep there and the time to do that has already arrived.
I shall dream of the light tonight.