Hear Yourself

I barely slept that night, glued to my phone tracking the typhoon. My flight had already been delayed almost a full day. The airline’s updates were vague, and no one picked up at the airport line. By morning, the typhoon had passed, continuing west.

Once the impact assessments started easing, Nicole and I decided to head to the airport as planned, take our chances. I had a blind kind of optimism, even though this typhoon had already wrecked too many plans. But I’ve believed since I was a kid — when I’m with Nicole, luck follows.

There’s a running joke about our city: the airport is absurdly far from downtown, nearly an hour by bus. Too much hassle, I thought, so I called a private car, picked up Nicole, and we drove out. The scenery along the way wasn’t encouraging. I felt very presidential, like I’d stepped out of a bunker to survey a world already destroyed — standing floodwater everywhere, trees knocked flat by the wind. But Nicole and I were resolute. We had to get to that airport.

The driver was probably wondering if two people this determined to catch an international flight, in these conditions, were headed off to close some multi-million-dollar deal.

The highway to the airport had been shut since the night before. By the time we reached the tollbooth, it still hadn’t reopened.

“Can’t take this car on the regular road — flooding. A bus might make it,” the driver told us.

So he dropped us at the bus stop instead. He was right. On the stretch of road leading into the airport, staring out the window, I felt for a moment like I was on a ferry.

At the airport, we got good news — ground staff told us the flight would likely go ahead, still on schedule. The bad news: past security, this comically small airport, without enough international routes to justify it, had no overpriced food to buy in the international departure hall. Everyone seemed to silently understand this, because the airline staff handed out drinks and instant noodles. Once I’d eaten, I fell asleep right there, no idea if I snored. I only properly woke when the plane was climbing fast through light rain. Very quickly, our hometown — just hit by the typhoon — became whole again, and at the same time, strangely insignificant.

That was the emptiest flight I’d ever been on. Empty enough that I really did feel presidential. Except no president could be this childish — sitting in one row for a while, then another — the only seats I avoided were the ones the flight attendant said were off-limits for balance. Yes, the plane was that empty: the handful of us on board were personally responsible for keeping it level. A sense of responsibility I’d never felt before.

Landing at KIX, I walked through the jet bridge, and through the terminal’s floor-to-ceiling windows, saw a sunset I hadn’t seen in a long time. More precisely, the sun had already set — what I caught was the last of its afterglow. Everything looked unusually clear, a kind of purity, like I’d swapped in a new pair of glasses to look at the world. It felt strange — like I’d suddenly forgotten where I’d come from, and none of it mattered anymore.

This was my first time in Japan, but I wasn’t nervous. In the months before, Nicole and I had planned everything out over an online collaboration tool. As a traveler — she’d left home to study abroad in her early teens — she was miles more experienced than me, and seemed to work out our next move without even needing to think about it. Immigration, which JR ticket to buy, which direction to walk. None of it was mine to worry about. All I had to do was carry her bag when she needed me to.

The original plan was one night in Osaka, then Kyoto the next day. Thanks to the typhoon, everything had shifted a day, so a little over an hour later, I was standing in the plaza outside Kyoto Station, not sure how to describe what I was looking at.

Kyoto Station itself was a kind of novelty. After a lifetime of China’s cookie-cutter train stations, my first thought was: what exactly is this? It had the kind of grandeur only modern architecture can pull off — grand almost past the point of necessity — and yet you can’t help tilting your head back, trying to work out that sixty-meter tangle of a roof. As the face of a thousand-year-old capital, it looked deliberately rebellious.

“I’m going to go smoke,” I told Nicole, pointing at the smoking area, hard to miss, out in the plaza.

“Go ahead. I’ll figure out how we’re getting to the place.”

I’d been holding it in — bought a lighter at a convenience store the second we landed, but hadn’t found anywhere to smoke since.

The smoking area was a fenced-off patch of the plaza, not even ten square meters. The mood inside was subtle — everyone there for the same bad habit, everyone on their phone, not speaking, carefully avoiding eye contact. They all looked like ordinary people who actually lived there. I figured I looked like I didn’t belong, even with smoke steadily leaving my mouth too.

I looked up and could see Kyoto Tower — tall, but not oppressive, somewhere between classical and modern, carrying a kind of energy that didn’t quite welcome anyone up for a closer look. And all around it, intensely commercial, intensely lively — nothing like the ancient capital I’d pictured.

According to the map, our Airbnb wasn’t far from the station. My appetite for exploring was high, I wasn’t particularly hungry, and I’d already heard taxis in Japan were expensive, so I decided we’d walk. On the map, it looked like a straight shot east, not much time at all. After poking around three different convenience stores near the station, we hauled our suitcases and started east. Before long, we were on Shiokoji Bridge.

And then, all at once, everything alive about the city vanished. All I could hear was the sound of the Kamo River. In the quiet of the summer night, it hit like a sudden burst of 5.1 surround sound — almost too loud. I leaned out, looking down at the riverbank, and told Nicole, excited, that it looked exactly like those spots in anime where middle schoolers linger after school.

Once we crossed the bridge, I felt like I’d stepped into some kind of kekkai.

Like putting on noise-canceling headphones for the first time. And it wasn’t just auditory, this stillness — the streetlights thinned out too, until I felt like I was walking half-blind. Nothing around but old, plain houses, some glowing with soft warm light. The sound of our suitcase wheels suddenly became enormous, and every centimeter we dragged them forward felt vaguely like something to apologize for.

My brain couldn’t process it — like the city had simply been sucked away. And the people along with it.

It felt like the whole world had shrunk down to just the two of us, standing in front of the south gate of Sanjūsangen-dō, unable to find the place we’d booked. It was a genuinely bad situation — the kind that should make your palms sweat. In the dark, no one around, the language barrier, the hour already late. But I didn’t feel anxious at all. If anything, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that calm. I could hear every voice inside my own head.

That’s what the world looks like in a lot of Akiyuki Shinbo’s anime. Aside from the main characters, there’s no one else — no passersby at all. Back in my college dorm, watching those shows, I understood, of course, that drawing background characters is a massive production cost, and that probably no one in the business is better at cutting corners than Shinbo. But standing in a Kyoto neighborhood at night, I actually understood that emptiness.

Two people who met at six years old, and this is where we’d ended up. Even if we spent the night stranded on the street, it would still be our adventure.

I don’t remember how we eventually found the place. What I’ll never forget is that Nicole loves gyudon. Once we’d settled in and rested a bit, we stepped back out into those dark little streets, toward the nearest Sukiya, on a corner in Shichijō. I ordered a bowl piled with scallions, and the way the onsen egg broke open matched every fantasy I’d had about this trip.

But we couldn’t walk another step. Let’s just get a cab.

Three minutes in the car. Arrived. 40 yuan.

Worth every penny.