[Please play The Mars Volta, De-Loused in the Comatorium]
Planning my day tomorrow. Going to take a trip to Kyoto for the big Bon festival. This festival is where they light a bunch of lanterns and float them down the river and also make huge kanji symbols on five mountains to help guide the dead to heaven. My first big trip, kinda. Well, I don't know why going to Kyoto should be different than going to Osaka, but somehow I have this idea that Osaka is more "home". I guess just because I've been there a couple of times... It's strange. The desire to call someplace home is really strong. Why should it matter whether I spend the night in Kyoto, Osaka, Takatsuki or anywhere else for that matter? I don't have that much stuff and the longest I've been anywhere here is less than two weeks. Still, somehow I feel relief after going somewhere to come back here, and when I can't find here I call it "lost".

I got lost again today. Happens almost everyday, but somehow when I go south I get more lost than usual. I have this fear of being lost. As soon as I can't tell where I am my heart starts pounding, cold sweat... you know, all the typical stuff. You'd think that since I get lost everyday now that I'd get used to it. Nope. Instead I'm just more familiar with the feeling. "Shit. I'm lost. Here goes the heart, next I'll start sweating. Yep. This is the normal lost feeling". I should feel comforted by the fact that feeling lost feels the same every time. Anyway, thank God I had my map, since I was convinced for awhile that north was south. And here comes another street rant: people using satellites have charted the deepest regions of the amazon, yet no one seems to have any idea about Takatsuki. The brave cartographers responsible for my map simply gave up after awhile and literally left areas blank in between the more major streets. The lines get more and more complicated until they just said "fuck it", and the twin lines denoting streets simply taper off.

II.
In case anyone wants to know where that future went where we all have hovercars and spandex suits and all architecture is pure white with rounded corners... it died. We all knew that. Today I found where it's buried. Expo '70 memorial park.

To get there you take a monorail, of course. Now clunky and dejected, it squeaked and jerked it's way to a lonely station north of Ibaraki. Debarking I found myself in a large station. A kind of time-space airlock to a lonely and rejected future. Obviously meant to accommodate thousands, it was now the first uncrowded place in Japan I had yet been to. Broad tiled walkways led gently down to the park entrance which was guarded by a giant monument to early 70's anime and ultraman movies. This three headed cerberus is perhaps one of the ugliest sculptures I have ever seen. But I felt some kind of strange attraction to it. Maybe it was pity. Guardian of the island of lost toys. Watcher over an empty kingdom, once great, now not in ruin, but kept perfectly unchanging. Everything at the park felt to be in stasis. No one walked on the perfectly cut grass. No one walked through the paths kept in the bamboo gardens. Lonely ice cream salespeople peered from their stalls at the passing stranger, come to disturb their slumber. The park is huge, perfect. Built for thousands to travel through easily with wide lanes leading to futuristic looking solar powered buildings and lined with strange abstract sculptures that look like giant spores, mushrooms, or space vehicles. But these paths actually just lead to locked, rusted gates.

In the center of this lonely kingdom of the future is an art museum, which was why I came. I read about a show by artist Kenji Yanobe, inspired by the expo site, the show is called "megalomania". I wish I could have taken some photos, but I'll look for a website. Really cool. The work was kind of divided between sculptural/conceptual pieces and more performance based stuff. Which sounds stupid, but it was the best show. I think this guys work was ripped off in that movie where J-Lo has to travel inside that guys 'mind. Huge, vaguely homo-erotic figures made out of black leather and brushed steel, or big iron aardvarks with giant black satin bags that inflate when you walk by, bound with heavy rubber. These things juxtaposed with cool, childish stuff. Cool "atom cars" that you could ride for ¥100 on Sundays. He even had some godzilla masks he made when he was 10 or so on display. I don't know. I could go on about the show, but I feel I've written so much already. I'll find the website. I think he's "known" somebody ask Karkow. Oh! And as I was checking the show out, in comes a photographer and a guy, and they start shooting. I ask if it's okay to go by, when I recognize they guy. It's the artist. So we start talking. Mostly about the park and that future. How we tear it down, like we're ashamed of that optimism we once had. About his work. We were the only people there. In the whole damn park. Here was the only other living person. It was like finding the man behind the curtain. I felt so great and lucky. I bowed low and thanked him for his hard work.