KYOTO: A LOVE STORY; or, ON REAL WORLD HERITAGE

it turns out it's only about six miles to and from gion from the shimogamo shrine, so accounting for the rambling i did waiting for the grocery store to open (ten o'clock?!?) and the distance between the shrine and fumi's apartment, i walked about ten miles. eleven, maybe, with all the backs and forth over the bridges across the river. my shins swear it was more. they've been quieted, thankfully, and thanks to a visit to a public bath just off of imadegawa doori, right across a narrow street from where i saw an impeccably dressed young woman, designer bag in hand, descending the staircase from the second floor of a mcdonald's. i deny her the benefit of doubting that she was there for the wifi.

there's a new -- and automatic, self-regulating -- bath at fumi's, but it's a wonderful, not to miss experience to pay to clean yourself in full view of the skeptical neighborhood old men and the local students who chose not to afford an apartment with bathing facilities. the possibility of discovering a diamond in the rough mural on the wall of the bathing room is enough to justify ducking off the street and through the curtained entryway, but even if the place is just tiled, you're really not settling if you still get to be treated to the kitsch of faucets disguised as cupid statues pouring water at your shoulder while you soak.

a middle aged woman seems always to be the one taking money, and she's the only one who has full view of both the men's and women's anterooms where bathgoers strip down before heading into the bathing area to shower. there are beers and energy drinks for sale, at least on the men's side, and ample seating encourages patrons to linger over drinks and cigarettes after pulling their things from their lockers and pulling on their shorts. each locker key has an elastic strap for wearing around an ankle or a wrist, but there's nothing to dropping one once you've moved to the main event: no one ever seems abashed at bending over in any direction or in any angle of the awfully unflattering florescent light.

you shower first, which is done sitting on a short stool along a row of shower heads with hot and cold faucets below them for rinsing. after that there's a warm bath, a hot one, a sauna and maybe even a steam room. there's a cold bath, too, to keep you from getting too woozy if you decide to linger. a younger man tonight was there only for the denki buro, which i've tried, that time too in kyoto during my high school class trip. i felt bullied after the experience, though i don't think my friend's encouragement of my trying that one new thing was malicious. it's just impossible not to be humiliated after having to claw your way, half paralyzed, over the wall of one of those tubs completely naked. running electricity through a pool of water doesn't seem safe. i'm sure it's not regulated. granted, the japanese also market stick-on mini defibrillators as massagers. this stuff must work for them. the man tonight looked perfectly relaxed.

no one needs another anecdote on the mystifying ins and outs of japanese culture. in fact, i had a thoroughly satisfying time at the bath, not once in my hour there feeling at all ill at ease. i shouldn't have been surprised, then, at what i found at the taqueria on higashi ooji doori where i stopped to eat beforehand. a taqueria seemed like an inexpensive dinner prospect (you try eating good japanese food in kyoto every night on a budget) when i'd passed it from across the street earlier in the evening, so i decided to take a look at the menu on my way in the other direction later. pachanga seats about a dozen people and is decorated like most taco joints: day of the dead statuettes, our lady banners, faux adobe walls. it manages, however, not to be generic. for one thing, it's a taqueria in the old capital of japan. on top of that, pachanga has handcrafted, wood bound menus at each table (mine highlighted bolivia), and a mixture of both mexican and cuban (look up pachanga) decorative elements on its walls. i don't know where the farmers in the four pictures on the wall of the alcove near the door are from, but i was especially charmed by the one who, from a thirty degree angle, looked like george w. bush in a juan valdez hat.

tacos at pachanga cost $3.50. you can also order a variety of tako rice dishes for between seven and ten dollars, but i didn't pay enough attention to the menu during my visit to find out what they included because some sort of doublethink let me decide at the time that the "tako" in tako rice wasn't the same "tako" as in my tacos. (japanese doesn't distinguish between c's and k's.) it's obvious now that a place like pachanga wouldn't be serving octopus rice.

the $3.50 you pay for a taco at pachanga isn't so much for the amount of food you get as the culinary ingenuity of pachanga's owner and cook: mozzarella beef? salmon avocado? they were both impressively tasty. japanese food can wait another night of five, right? i could even just stop by and shell out for one as a light lunch so that i could try somewhere else in the evening. in that case, though, i'd have to make a tough decision between the spicy meat with cottage cheese and the triple mushroom with garlic. i took a card. maybe if i go back i'll get one on the house.