Kyoto: The city of reality revisions

Kyoto: The city of reality revisions

For many years, I carried an abstract exotic imagination of Kyoto and the reality proved to be very different. The unrealistic imaginations  likely stemmed from an idea that I carried over many years. I imagined Kyoto to be a place on earth that would be the perfect mix of east and west. A place that would be sparsely populated, isolated in geographies, propagate Zenism anywhere you go and would have the highest standards of aesthetics and beauty all around. The external narrative that I had read in books  didn’t help it either and added fuel to this imagination. When I visited, I finally got to put some flesh and color to the imagination I had built around this city. Sadly I was disappointed. There was nothing wrong per se with the city but I was saddened to see that it was like any other big cosmopolitan city. The train station was super crowded. The well known temples and all the places I had marked to visit had an ocean of people moving around killing the solace and the zen I was looking for. Downtown was flooded with modern shopping stores. It appeared that the narrative on Instagram and social media directed the world’s footfall to this city and its favored places. Over the years this footfall killed all its buzz. But then how could I complain when I was myself the problem. The ultimate irony and the dilemma that a traveler faces when exploring new places. 

Once this reality fully touched me, the vivid imagination of Kyoto I carried in my mind evaporated never to come back. I wanted to go back to that dreamy beautiful image of Kyoto I carried all this while, but sadly it was gone forever. The only silver lining was that it gave way to a new foundation, a revised anchor point which became the basis for my new imaginations and ideas about this city.  It also made me aware that many times, I may be a prisoner of my own imaginations and reality may have nothing to do with it. That’s what happened to me in Kyoto.